It's with considerable awe that I've come away from a few concerts recently. The latest was the first concert of CIMF2024 at Verity Lane, a solo voice and electrics/electronics outing by Lotte Betts-Dean. She's a mezzo-soprano, but more. This was a combination of classical singer's chops and compositional awareness with recordings of voices, loops, various electronic marvels. I'd half expected something improvised given the concert title Vocal Electrics, but no these were compositions, formal works, composed by a series of composers, mostly fairly recent, but going back to the era of Dada. There was one commissioned work by Nicole Smede with Canberra and aboriginal relevance. Suffice to say I was stunned. Ten tracks, little separated although obviously quite diverse in character. I hadn't collected a program and initially guessed they were movements of one work, mostly "devoid of semantic language". Lines like "The place as it were / new born baby" and "I am ... I am" may have sat together but the rap was distinctly something different. Lotte had grown up in Berlin amongst European languages and the birth of electronica of various styles and listening to Portishead and her father was composer Brett Dean and he was experimenting with electronic music at the time. So it was a family outing. To me, it was something of awe and wonder and newness. Just fabulous and expansive and inclusive of styles and so well performed, too.
Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo-soprano, electronics) performed for the Canberra International Music Festival at Verity Lane. She performed works including a commission by Nicole Smede.
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