RADIANT POisON

A New Music & Video EP from singer-composer MISHA PENTON

EP on Bandcamp

Set in a dreamworld of city and ocean-scapes, 
Radiant Poison is an exploration of our ephemeral, delicate bodies
against the sparkling and hidden worlds of natural and urban landscapes.

Misha Penton is a singer, composer, director, writer, and filmmaker. Her music is a blend of futuristic opera, avant-spoken word, and chamber electronica, set in a dreamworld of city and ocean-scapes where poetry comes alive in the movement of language through the voice and body. From a delicate spider-silk tone thread to shimmering and cascading wails, you will hear the rise and fall of her many-layered voices, and the swirling guitars and electronic sound worlds created by Misha and her collaborators. mishapenton.com

For ease of access, below please below EP info and liner notes, embeddable video links, steaming videos to view here, the Bandcamp EP link, and audio streams with lyrics, followed by artist bios.

RADIANT POISON
Misha Penton: composer, soprano, lyrics, films, production
with original contributions from
George Heathco, guitars and Chris Becker, beats

Music mixed by Misha Penton / Final mix & mastering by Todd Hulslander
Films Directed & Edited by Misha Penton 
Music & Films Produced by Misha Penton
Dave Nickerson & Raul Casares, cameras
Made in The Mishaverse
All photo captions: Misha Penton, singer-composer. Photo credit: D. Nickerson

Contact Misha

#MishaMusic
#TheMishaverse

Misha Penton is a “magic maker” — Chris Becker for Sequenza 21
“Misha Penton provides a wave of creativity in Houston and beyond” — Meghan Hendley Lopez, Free Press Houston

Download this EPK on Dropbox: copy, links, hi res & web photos here.

Music Video Links
Radiant Poison video - Embeddable link: https://vimeo.com/641997559
Shore Pines & Spider Silk - Embeddable link: https://vimeo.com/641997674
Visible Darkness (new cut) - Embeddable link: https://vimeo.com/641997808

Project Notes from Misha
Radiant Poison was created by composing and recording the multi-layers of voice first, focusing on an exploration of the sonority of my poetry. Then, electronic musician Chris Becker lent me beats and atmospheres to play with and his generosity gave me leeway to manipulate his tracks: to weave his sounds in and out of my voice layers—ebbing, flowing, emerging from, and receding into the many layers of my voice. Lastly, I sent these draft mixes to guitarist George Heathco, asking him to add his guitar tracks with free rein over his contribution. Once George sent me back his tracks, I used an exquisite corpse-like process to shape the final works. Todd Hulslander, at Houston Public Media, polished the final mix and mastered the recordings.

I delight in setting the conditions for work to happen and I trust the magic to occur because of the people involved. Through George’s and Chris’ adventurous creativity and familiarity with my practice—and my knowledge of their craft—our work together emerged, evolved, and changed through the process. Using a combination of composed, semi-improvisational and chance methods is freeing. Indeterminacy and happy accidents are delightfully unpredictable, and it’s a practical method of making work with skilled and simpatico collaborators who are, themselves, juggling their own projects and professional obligations.

The videos were filmed in Houston in my home studio, in streetlamp-lit neighborhood vacant lots, out in the city with its sparkling lights, misty mornings, and soaring highway overpasses, and on the windswept tip of Cape Cod at Race Point. The bulk of the camera work was done by Dave Nickerson with Raul Casares and some of my own B-roll shooting. My concept for, and my editing of the films reflect the chance operations I used in shaping the creation of the music—the happenstance in the overlay of moving images mirrors a similar kind of synchronicity present in the creation of the music.

Full EP liner notes here.

Social Media Links
Website: https://mishapenton.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mishadiva
Facebook: fb.me/MishaPentonMusic
Bandcamp: http://music.mishapenton.com
#MishaMusic
#TheMishaverse

EP on Bandcamp here

VIDEOS:

Radiant Poison

Misha Penton, composer, soprano, lyrics, film
with original contributions from
George Heathco, guitars and Chris Becker, beats

February 18 Release with Bandcamp drop
Embeddable link: https://vimeo.com/641997559

Lyrics

Capricious moon peeks through a window, descends a staircase of clouds, fills the room like radiant poison…Beauty gathers herself out of darkness. Her black hair streams out... ‘You will love what I love and what loves me: men who have green eyes, whose throats know my nocturnal caresses…clouds, silence, and the night; the sea immense and green; the multiform waters; the sinister flowers that resemble sensors of an unknown religion…” Among the petals of night flowers, monsters sleep…

— Inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s poem, ‘The Blessings of the Moon’ (1869). Translated by Misha.

Shore Pines & Spider Silk

Misha Penton, composer, soprano, lyrics, film
with original contributions from
George Heathco, guitars and Chris Becker, beats

February 25 Video Release
Embeddable link: https://vimeo.com/641997674

Lyrics

I open the front door and little gold beetles fly to the porch light
Pale yellow buds fold into sleep
An egret alights on a cement fence:
— he stalks moths among winter blossoms
An almost-full moon illuminates the forest
Conifers hold their wind-blown shapes
And the smooth gray frameworks of gnarled shore pines twist skyward
Ice crystals encrust blades of marsh grasses
Sending up tiny frozen spikes of multi-colored moss
I warm unfurling tendrils with whispers and songs and rhymes
I brush past fern fiddleheads and the icy white skeletons of bishop’s lace
…tiny spiders weave webs from starlight

Visible Darkness

Misha Penton, composer, soprano, lyrics, film
with original contributions from
George Heathco, guitars and Chris Becker, beats

March 4 Video Release
Embeddable link: https://vimeo.com/641997808

Lyrics

A thunderhead churns in slow-motion, its high clouds billow white against a darkening blue expanse. Bats chirp a chorus under a bayou bridge and a falcon circles a slow descent. Thousands of grackles gather on powerlines to watch the end of day: the last rays of sun move across the city as it rises from the desert plain.

Her abdomen hovers above the sparkle of twisted skyscrapers and her thin, long legs easily navigate between metallic buildings: one furry claw here on the pavement (barely missing a sidewalk crack), and one claw there, next to a man asleep on a bench (he doesn’t wake).

Now, beyond the buildings, she rests at the edge of a concrete-lined waterway. Between her two front legs she holds the remnants of a shattered porcelain bowl. Its glaze is a galaxy swirl of greens and blues – tiny bird silhouettes lift from its fractured surface and merge into the surrounding darkness.

She gathers the shards and makes her way to a deserted avenue. She ascends a slick glass tower. A shimmer of silk spools out from her spinnerets and wafts high on the breeze, sticking to the steel building across the street. One glimmering thread at a time, she crafts a magnificent web. At last, she settles in its centre and starts to work on the shattered bowl: with silk and gold, she adheres each broken piece to its match, and makes what was once broken, whole.

BIOS

I’m a singer, composer, director, writer, and filmmaker. I invent and perform solo and collaborative dramatic new music works. My projects blossom in many forms: live performance, audio projects, video works, site specific installations, visual art works, lyrics, and writings.

My music inhabits a dreamworld where poetry comes alive in the movement of language through the voice and body. From a delicate spider-silk tone thread to a shimmering and cascading wail—I use my vocal palette to discover something new and uncharted.

My music sounds like a blend of futuristic opera, avant-spoken word, and gothic chamber electronica—you will hear the rise and fall of my many layered voices, and the swirling guitars and electronic sound worlds created by me and my collaborators.

I make my home in Houston, Texas and I’ve come to love the dystopian beauty of Houston’s spiraling superhighways, the cathedral-like concrete pilings of the underpasses, the wildflower-lined bayous, and the ever-expanding glass and steel of the metropolis. I’ve been fortunate to plane-hop quite a lot: I’ve been from Beijing to Brunei and Bangkok to Berlin, and I’m most in love with isolated and wild places like Vancouver Island, Isle of Skye, and The Orkney Islands.

My recent projects include a 13-part Micro Opera project including my (micro)Requiem inspired by Mozart’s unfinished Requiem in D minor; Threshold, a site specific experimental ensemble performance inspired by the ancient Greek Eleusinian Mysteries created for the cavernous and iconic Silos at Sawyer Yards in Houston, as well as the release of the Threshold music video; Anecdote of the Spirit, a contemplative work created for the Rothko Chapel in Houston; The Medusa Project, a multi-version monodrama for voice and media comprised of films, writings, and installations including Medusa Emergent: a film and sound work created for the 35’ high MediaWall at Bath Spa University, UK.

I recently made my directorial debut with Houston Grand Opera directing A Rose, a web opera in HGO’s series Star Cross’d, as well as singing a principle role in the music workshop for a new opera in development at Houston Grand Opera / HGOco. I’ve also been delighted to be a guest artist at The Juilliard School, Concordia University Montreal, University of Houston Honors College, Sam Houston State University, Texas A&M College Station, and Lone Star College Montgomery, Texas. Misha’s site.

Chris Becker, beats & atmospheres
The music of composer Chris Becker is equally inspired by rock and roll language, avant-garde jazz, dub compositional strategies, and musique concrète. He has created music for dance, film and mixed media installations and received grants and awards from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Meet The Composer, the American Music Center (now New Music USA) and the American Society of Composers and Publishers. Becker’s music for dance includes the score for choreographer Rachel Cohen’s evening-length work If The Shoe Fits (2005), named one of the best dance performances of 2005 by New York Times dance critic John Rockwell. Becker’s collaboration with painter and video artist Lillian Warren and dancer Annie Arnoult Who You Once Were performed to sold out audiences August 23 and 24, 2019 at Aurora Picture Show, Houston, TX. Becker has also composed music for choreographers Sasha Soreff (The Other Shoe, Ailey Citigroup Theater, 2009), Adrian Jevicki (La Spectra, The Tank, 2009), Rebecca French (The Rite of Summer, Cullen Theater, Wortham Center, 2015), and Blakeley White-McGuire (Devotion, Bell Works, 2021). Becker’s film scores include artist Jil Guyon’s award-winning video Widow, which premiered February 4, 2014, at the Dance on Camera Festival presented by Dance Films Association and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. For their collaboration, WIDOW_Remix (2016), Becker created the score from over a dozen solo voice improvisations by Helga Davis, who sang and tracked her performances while watching the film. In September 2019, four of Guyon’s videos scored by Becker screened at the Cinédanse Ottowa, Canada. Becker’s music has been featured on John Schaefer’s WNYC radio series ‘New Sounds’ and Helga Davis’ ‘Evening Music’. Chris Becker’s music.

George Heathco, guitars
As a guitarist, composer, educator, and collaborator, Houston musician George Heathco has worked with a wide variety of artists, organizations, and schools. Equally at home in a diverse range of styles, the genre-hopping musician has played guitar with many of Houston’s leading music and theater organizations, local songwriters and rock/pop bands, and numerous churches and contemporary worship services. He has composed and contributed music for television, radio, theater, jazz and chamber ensembles, and rock/pop acts. In 2016, his setting of Psalm 88 was premiered by Duo Scordatura at Carnegie Hall. Since 2004, George Heathco has been active as a music educator, teaching privately, conducting workshops, and teaching classes and courses at numerous Houston-area schools and colleges. George’s site.