SOLSTICE SONGS:
LAST CICADA

Music to Celebrate the Longest Day of the Year

New Music & Video from singer-composer MISHA PENTON

Release: June 21, 2023, evergreen thereafter

Bandcamp and All Music Streaming Services
 
Solstice Songs: Last Cicada
explores the beauty and resonance of Houston’s iconic summer soundscape:
the unseen cicadas and our relationship with our environment through music and poetry

For ease of access, below you will find info and notes about the project, a preview of the song, Last Cicada, a video teaser, links to Misha’s social media, website, and music streaming on all platform as well as lyrics and the artist’s bio. Right click to save images or download the EPK on Dropbox: Word doc copy with links and hi res photos here.

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 Bayo —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.

Social Media & Streaming Links
Website: https://mishapenton.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mishadiva
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/misha.penton
Misha on Spotify
Misha on Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/misha-penton/622676817
Bandcamp: http://music.mishapenton.com
Misha on All Music Streaming Platforms: https://bio.to/mishapenton
#MishaMusic
#TheMishaverse

BIOS

Bio Short
Misha Penton is a singer, composer, director, writer, and filmmaker. Her music is a blend of futuristic art song, avant-spoken word, and chamber electronica, set in poetic 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.

Bio Long
Misha Penton is a singer, composer, director, writer, and filmmaker. She invents and performs solo and collaborative dramatic new music works. Her projects blossom in many forms: live performance, audio projects, video works, site specific installations, visual art works, lyrics, and writings.

Her 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—she uses her vocal palette to discover something new and uncharted.

Her music sounds like a blend of futuristic art song, avant-spoken word, and chamber electronica—you will hear the rise and fall of her many layered voices, and swirling electronic sound worlds.

She makes her home in Houston, Texas and she’s 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.

Her recent projects include a 13-part Micro Opera project including my (micro)Requiem inspired by Mozart’s unfinished Requiem in D minor; Visible Darkness, a new postopera music video; 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 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; This is our universe a new monodrama based on the work of Virginia Woolf; Siren on the Sabine, a dramatic music-dance piece inspired by Homer's Odyssey which premiered at The Menil Collection; and the fall 2021 release of a new set of Micro Operas, Creation Stories, related to the phases of the moon and inspired by sacred cosmogony texts.

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

Check out the newly released new music video EP, Radiant Poison, celebrating the magnificent transformative feminine. Upcoming projects: more music and video releases including two new singles, Wings and North Wind. Misha’s site.