SOLSTICE SONGS: LAST CICADA
SOLSTICE SONGS:
LAST CICADA
Music to Celebrate the Longest Day of the Year
Solstice Songs: Last Cicada is a music and video release from Misha Penton for the Summer Solstice…
Misha Penton is a singer, composer, director, writer, and filmmaker. Her music is a blend of futuristic art song and chamber electronica; her lyrics evoke dreamworlds 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 woven into swirling electronic sound worlds.
Solstice Songs: Last Cicada is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance and in support collaboration with Memorial Park Conservancy.
A NEW MUSIC VIDEO
SOLSTICE SONGS: LAST CICADA
“The music is a multi-layered composition of voices that build, break down, and build up again to create an unpredictable, yet beautiful secession of harmonies, with mysterious, almost arcane lyrics comprised of Penton’s original poetry.”
Last Cicada
Misha Penton: composer, soprano, lyrics, films, production
Music mixed by Misha Penton / Final mix & mastering by Don Gunn
Films Directed & Edited by Misha Penton
Music & Films Produced by Misha Penton
Made in The Mishaverse
Project Notes from Misha
Solstice Songs: Last Cicada was created by composing and recording the multi-layers of voice first, focusing on an exploration of the sonority of my poetry. Then, I composed the electronic orchestration that is the soundworld for my voice: ebbing, flowing, emerging from, and receding into the many layers of my voice. Don Gunn polished the final mix and mastered the final recording.
I use a combination of composed, semi-improvisational and chance methods that feel liberating—relying on delightful indeterminacy and happy accidents—the hallmarks of playing music with The Universe.
The video was filmed in Houston in my home studio, at our beautiful Memorial Park and along White Oak Bayou—all during wildflower season. The bulk of the camera work was done by myself. 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.