NL Premiere

Rewire presents a rare performance from the influential experimental musician, vocalist, and composer Joan La Barbara – performing for the first time in the Netherlands in 13 years. Her virtuosic singing style – honed over decades of dedication to and research into different ways of using the voice – has been featured in works by composers including Philip Glass, John Cage, Robert Ashley, and Steve Reich. Her compositions focus around extended vocal techniques which take circularity and cycles as their driving force. To begin to understand La Barbara’s work, one may simply look to her first album’s title: Voice Is The Original Instrument (1976) – this is a creed she has held throughout her career, that, although roaming into electronic and contemporary classical realms, has always been rooted in the voice as a beacon of meaning and (dis)harmony. From the ritualistic, foreboding tones of Twelvesong (1983), to the visuality of the playful Sound Paintings (1991), to the animistic bellows of Shamansong (1998), La Barbara’s shape-shifting work foregrounds experimentation and disruption, forever finding new ideas for playing the voice-as-instrument in unimaginable ways.