Originally trained to sing European art song and opera, since 1999 Carol Sawyer’s singing practice has largely centred on improvised music. A brief sampling of some of her musical activities are listed below – for more information, please visit the performance section of her CV.
NOW Creative Music Series #10
In spring 2021 Sawyer was invited by NOW society to participate in their Creative Music Series #10, in which she collaborated with musicians in Vancouver, Chicago, and Minneapolis, and sound engineers in Vancouver and Amsterdam, to record a series of improvised trios and sextets. The resulting music videos were incorporated into NOW’s Youtube Channel TV8E, and are available to view on my Vimeo channel in the section: NOW creative music series
Subjoy Ride and the Baroness Elsa
In August 2021 Sawyer completed Subjoy Ride, a new video based on the poem of the same title, written by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven in 1920 – 1922, while the Baroness was living in New York City. The poem snaps and crackles with collaged ad slogans and the mechanical rhythms of the rapidly modernizing city. Composer Aleksandar Zecevic turned Sawyer’s performance of the text into a vibrant sound score, and Amo Yue Wang assisted with the video editing. The visuals are almost entirely gleaned from historical footage from the Prelinger Archives. You can listen and watch the video here: Subjoy Ride
Subjoy ride was created for the exhibition The Baroness Elsa Project, curated by Heather Anderson and Irene Gammel. Inspired by the ground-breaking dada poet/ performance artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, the exhibition The Baroness Elsa Project brings together work by Lene Berg, Dana Claxton, ray ferreira, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Wit López, Taqralik Partridge, Sheilah ReStack, Carol Sawyer, and Cindy Stelmackowich. The show premiered at the Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa in fall 2021 and will be up at Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, from January 29th till April 10th, 2022.
Bewegung and Novembertag is Sawyer’s first experiment with using a poem by von Freytag-Loringhoven as the basis for a musical improvisation. Comissioned by NOW in 2020, it premiered on NOW’s YouTube channel, TV8E, as part of Season 2 Episode 5 • Pterodactyl, which can be viewed on TV8E here. The video was subsequently included in the live stream of the Hexannacht Festival, and in the IICSI improv festival online livestream, both in 2022.
Isolation journal – Friends: Memory Lost
IN Summer 2021 Composer John Oliver invited Sawyer to contribute to his haunting project, Isolation Journal – Friends. The diverse compositions (original solos, and John’s digital compositions based on the solos) are available on John’s Bandcamp channel here. You can watch the video that John built from Carol’s improvisation, on John’s youtube channel:
ion Zoo
Ion Zoo with Marianne Trudel, June 15, 2013.
Since the late 1990s Sawyer has performed extensively with her improvising ensemble ion Zoo, which features Clyde Reed on bass, Steve Bagnell on saxophones and clarinets, Lisa Cay Miller on piano, and Sawyer making up songs and stories. They have released two CDs: ion Zoo set free at the Cellar, produced in conjunction with NOW, and the self-produced Venus Looks Good. Venus Looks Good was reviewed by Exclaim and Music Works, and is available for purchase.
In 2010 ion Zoo was commissioned by Los Angeles-based composer/improvising trombonist Michael Vlatkovich and Albuquerque-based poet Mark Weber to record the album Elasticity with them. You can listen to a sample, or purchase a download of the recording here. In 2015 Sawyer also contributed vocals to Vlatkovich’s amazing recording Mortality, which is reviewed, and can be previewed, here.
Where to Listen?
Ion Zoo albums Venus Looks Good and Set Free at the Cellar are available on Apple Music, Youtube Music, Spotify, and Tidal.
CDs can be purchased on Amazon.
To view video of live performances, go to Carol Sawyer’s Live Music Performance Album on Vimeo.
Purchase a digital download of Elasticity, a poetry album by Mark Weber and Michael Vlatkovich with vocals sung by Carol Sawyer.
Voxy
From 2007 to 2016 Sawyer and fellow-singer Kate Hammett-Vaughan organized and ran VOXY, a yearly series of workshops on improvisation for singers. Each six-week set of pay-what-you-can community workshops was facilitated by a different workshop leader, drawn from the theatre, dance, music, comedy and spoken word communities.
Cabaret Music
Lisa Cay Miller and Carol Sawyer at The Western Front, Vancouver BC, 2013.
In 2013 Carol Sawyer was invited by Music on Main’s artistic director David Pay to research and create a performance that combined early Berlin Cabaret music with improvisation. In collaboration with pianist Lisa Cay Miller, a selection of these deconstructed tunes were presented at two concerts at the Western Front, as part of Music on Main event Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire @ 100.
Natalie Brettschneider
The Natalie Brettschneider project began in 1998 with a performance of Brettschneider’s repertoire – with Carol Sawyer singing, and Andreas Kahre playing piano. This short song recital was created at the invitation of curator and artist Lori Weidenhammer and presented at the Reinventing the Diva Festival, which was held at the Western Front in September of 1999. A type of recital component has accompanied most of the exhibitions of the work since that first unveiling of the project.
You can see video documentation of the recital that Carol Sawyer, Lisa Cay Miller, Elisa Thorn and Katie Rife presented in conjunction with the exhibition of the Natalie Brettschneider Archive at the VAG here.
Sound Image Net (SIN)
In 2016, SIN was released, a collaborative project between Carol Sawyer, Paul Cram, Jared Burrows, Ralph Eppel, Claude Reed, and Gregg Simpson. The album is available for listening and purchase on BandCamp.