Voicescapes by Randi Pontoppidan & Thomas Buckner

Randi Pontoppidan and Thomas Buckner started singing together almost immediately when they met in 2017. From a serendipitous session at Pontoppidan’s home to performances at Copenhagen’s Monday Club, they discovered a shared language of improvisation, musical invention and spiritual connection. In 2018, they recorded at Karmacrew Studio with engineer John Fomsgaard, on the beautiful island of Møn, Denmark. With no preconceived musical material, no overdubs and no sound sources other than voices, “Voicescapes” documents the spontaneous music of two kindred souls.

Randi Pontoppidan is an internationally acclaimed Danish vocalist, improviser and composer working with free improvisation, jazz, performance art, electroacoustic composition and sound poetry. She creates vast sonic landscapes full of organic warmth and poetic sensibility and is known for her extended vocal techniques, often mixed with live electronic processing. She works with jazz luminaries including Greg Cohen, Joëlle Léandre, Sissel Vera Pettersen and with Danish poet Morten Søndergaard. Pontoppidan is also an in-demand vocalist in the contemporary classical world, working with Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices and performing works by Steve Reich, David Lang, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage and others. Pontoppidan was a nominee for the 2020 Steppeulven award for best vocalist in Denmark.

Thomas Buckner has dedicated himself to the world of new and improvised music for more than 50 years. In collaboration with a host of prominent composers and improvisers, Buckner continues to commission and perform numerous chamber works, orchestral pieces and song cycles, as well as developing new approaches to solo and group improvisation, spontaneous musical invention, a full spectrum of extended vocal sounds and new forms of opera. Long term collaborators include multi instrumentalist and composer Roscoe Mitchell (with whom Buckner has worked every year for 40 years), Robert Ashley (in whose opera company he sang leading roles and toured the world for 35 years), Annea Lockwood, Alvin Lucier, Wadada Leo Smith, Muhal Richard Abrams, Bun Ching Lam, Petr Kotik, Christian Wolff, Earl Howard, Matthias Kaul and many others.

Also featuring Randi Pontoppidan:
Space Geode by Event Horizon: Greg Cohen and Randi Pontoppidan
https://eventhorizonmusic.bandcamp.com/album/space-geode
ROOMS by Randi Pontoppidan
https://randipontoppidan.bandcamp.com/album/rooms
HEAD¨SPACE by Randi Pontoppidan & Christian Rønn
https://randipontoppidanchristianrnn.bandcamp.com/album/head-space

Danish composer, experimental vocalist, improviser, sound poet, and educator.

randipontoppidan.com