Outer Ear: Juliet Fraser

British soprano JULIET FRASER presents ‘A certain kind of light’, a new program for voice and fixed audio. At the heart of the program are two modules of Tracery, an ongoing collaboration with Canadian composer Cassandra Miller which explores the idea of ‘automatic singing’; alongside these is a piece concerning fish by Cassandra’s former teacher, Christopher Butterfield, and new works by two British composers, Lawrence Dunn and Eleanor Cully. This hour-long set experiments with public meditation, private poetry, mimicry and murmurings, to tear at the traditional notions of vocality and performativity.

British soprano Juliet Fraser has a repertoire dominated by the very old and the very new. In early music, she has been a regular member of the Monteverdi Choir (Sir John Eliot Gardiner), Collegium Vocale Gent (Philippe Herreweghe) and Gli Angeli Genève (Stephan MacLeod). In new music, she has performed as a guest soloist with Talea, Klangforum Wien, Remix, Plus-Minus, ICTUS and We Spoke: New Music Company, as well as with the London Sinfonietta and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Juliet is principal soprano of EXAUDI, the acclaimed vocal ensemble that she founded in 2002 with composer/conductor James Weeks. She has premiered well over 100 works, many of which have been written for her, and has worked particularly closely with composers Michael Finnissy, Bernhard Lang, Rebecca Saunders, Matthew Shlomowitz, Andrew Hamilton and Cassandra Miller. Recent highlights include premiere performances at the Vienna Konzerthaus, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Transit Festival 20/21 (Leuven), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and MaerzMusik (Berlin). Her recording of Morton Feldman’s Three Voices was released on Hat Hut Records in 2016 and nominated for a Deutschen Schallplattenkritik Prize. This is her first solo tour of the USA.