Composed and performed by Gregory Whitehead (7:40)
Based on the text for the third leaflet of the White Rose anti-Nazi movement, written and distributed in the summer of 1942.
WALL INSCRIPTION BY THE WHITE ROSE: DOWN WITH HITLER!
˜˜˜˜˜˜˜
Category Archives: Uncategorized
In the Midst of Deepest Night
Composed & performed by GW, in commemoration of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance. Additional vocals by Aimée Anders.
Based on a translation of the White Rose’s second leaflet, distributed in June 1942, including both the quote from Lao-tse and the request to make as many copies as possible, with the word “leaflet” changed to “broadcast”.
Counterpoint quotes are from Hannah Arendt’s definitive study, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951.
˜
˜˜˜
The tumor broke open
And infected the whole body
Now the end is at hand
When a wave of unrest
Goes through the land
When it is in the air
This catastrophe
Terror without end
can be shaken off
˜˜˜˜˜
“Society is always prone to accept a person offhand for what he pretends to be, so that a crackpot posing as a genius always has a certain chance to be believed.” — Hannah Arendt
˜˜˜˜˜˜˜
If Everyone Waits
Vocals, assorted musical instruments, radio crackle & VLF castaways (11:09).
Created in April 2025, in memory of the White Rose anti—Nazi resistance using sentences and phrases from their first leaflet, distributed in June 1942.
“If everyone waits till someone else makes a start, the messengers of the avenging nemesis will draw incessantly closer.”
First broadcast on WGXC via the Electroacoustic Poetical Society (EAPS), curated by Marjorie Van Halteran.
˜˜˜˜˜˜˜
May It Come
A broadcast for the ever-vibrant Radia network that begins with How Still (2024), a disintegrative composition for voice and cosmic crackle inspired by the structure and rhythm of a Langston Hughes poem, featuring a home-made DIY ventilator that fails to sustain the patient.
Then follows May It Come (2024), the title descending from a well-known passage in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, May it come that the sounds of the Bardo shall be known as one’s own sounds.
A freely associative consideration of the Beefheart Affliction; the dangerous game of creating schizophonic monsters; the compost heap of radio’s intrinsic entropy and instability; the creative possibilities released through the fractures of a broken subjectivity; a synthetic voice ripened, to the point of bursting; a piece of flesh that we shall call Figgy Pudding; a bit of brain beneath a fingernail; a scratched radio thanatophony; and a pair of eyes reflecting a Hegelian Night that becomes —- awful.
Both pieces incubated in the fertile regions of the Electroacoustical Poetical Society and its esteemed fellow castaways; thanks to MVH for her bouyance amidst the maelstrom.
(photo credit: Patrick Harkin)
What Murmurs
With Edward Abbey, Gelsey Bell, George Bergen, Hilary Deeley, Vanessa Gageos, Helen Hahmann, Nuno Neves, Tiago Schwäbl, Anne Undeland, Laura Vitale and Laura Wiens.
“I am speaking to you now from the edge of a very large swampland. I cannot really see where the water ends and the land begins. Radio play loves edges: between seduction and oblivion; between the raw and the cooked; between the fur and the bone; between infinity and the present tense; between the play and the thing; the value of quiet beaver labor away from the mainstream, reshaping the local landscape as she creates shelter for herself and for her little grand idea that stumbles in, uninvited. But I have no intention of offering neat parables to you, not when I am lying inches away from stinky mud. The sun is going down and in a few more minutes if I stay here I will become food for the mosquitos. It’s time to move on, and so from the Big Sloppy….”
Nothing Like Us
Radio performance based on Carl Sandburg’s Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind, with vocalist Laura Wiens. Premier broadcast during Radiophrenia festival, 2017.
Bravo Echo
CLICK FOR CASTAWAY
An entropic vocal castaway created for the gallerycast/broadcast Haunted Air, curated by Julia Drouhin.
Text/Flesh
Between 1984 and 1989, I worked intensively with choreographer and dancer Karen Bamonte on a series of pieces that played somewhat tongue-in-cheek with various philosophical and literary ideas about textuality in relation to the body and corporeality in relation to the text.
Percussionist/artist Toshi Makihara joined us in 1986, adding rhythmic and “timekeeper” elements. Below, excerpts from our publicity materials, also accessible as a PDF. I have several videos, and will upload them once digitized.
In Munich….
THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES
And digisnaps from a Painted Bride postcard, artifact from an analog era…..
