my sighs in shockings
This series of improvised saxophone and voice duets is remarkable for the way in which it combines the sophisticated and the most direct means of communication. On the one hand it is an essay in the most rarefied of extended techniques - from Butcher's oscillator-like pitch flexibility to an almost serial handling of harmonics, pops and split tones to Mackness's combination of operatic techniques and throat singing, even coughing, in a mutely theatrical way. On the other hand, there are those titles, suggesting a kind of transformation of the folk song, or perhaps an Elizabethan richness and playfulness of the tongue, the mutability and magnification of all things.
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