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

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.

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; 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.

I made my 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. I’ve 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.