LIZARD TONGUE
NINA DANTE + BETHANY YOUNGE
OUT ON TAK EDITIONS 9/8/21
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Nina Dante + Bethany Younge’s LIZARD TOUNGE is a conversation with the stones, with the air, with the branches of trees, with the living leaves, with the water, and with the songs of creatures reimagined through the human psyche. Created at the intersection of Dante and Younge’s practices as improvising performers and as composers, the duo uses their voices, entities from the natural world, and instruments made from clay and wood in an improvisatory flow state to invoke seven narrative sonic landscapes. The sound of stones, shells, living branches, tree bark, dry grasses, clay jaguar whistles, wooden flutes and jaw harps, as well as the singing, humming, whistling, growling and grunting of the performers’ voices embody psychically-charged landscapes from the depths of the churning earth to the aetheric heavens.
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Artist: Nina Dante + Bethany Younge • Album: Lizard Tongue • Format: CD | Digital • Release: 9/8/21
Label: TAK editions • Cat. No. TAKe004 • Label Code: M9-518 • UPC/EAN: 085218024475
• Label + Promotion: Laura@TAKensemble.com
photo by Madelyn Grubbs
About Nina Dante + Bethany Younge: Long-term artistic collaborators, performer-composers Nina Dante and Bethany Younge bring together the threads of music, text creation, theatrical scenario, costuming, and video to create uniquely scintillating and perplexing works. Their collaborative work is characterized by an exploration of the corporeal knowing, surreality and archetype, and visceral expression. Their creations include Bodyscape (2016), ALAMARGO (2018), Feet to roots eyes to air (2020), and their forthcoming release with TAK Editions, Lizard Tongue (2021). These works have been presented by Long Beach Opera, Oberlin Conser- vatory, the Frequency Series, the Twin Cities New Music Festival, and Fonema Consort.
TRACK LISTING:
The stones discuss
The shells dance
When the frogs wake
The birds of the heavens sing to the reptiles and the reptiles sing back
When there’s no wind blowing
The breathing sands
The lizard’s tongue
All tracks created and recorded by Nina Dante + Bethany Younge • Mixed by Bethany Younge • Mastered by Taylor Brook • Album Artwork: ‘Urdimbre discontinua’ by Ana Teresa Barboza • Album Design by Laura Cocks • ℗ & © 2021 Nina Dante + Bethany Younge
LIZARD TONGUE TEASER TRAILER ~
LIZARD TONGUE INTERVIEWS ~
ABOUT THE ARTISTS :
Soprano vocalist Nina Dante is a soloist, chamber musician, improviser and composer. Musical experimentation and the channeling of the voice’s emotive power are inspiring forces behind her work. Her current work and artistic practices are rooted in the animate landscape, and are dedicated to deepening communication with, exchange with, knowing of, and personal relationship with the natural world. Hailed for her “amazing performance of vocal versatility by a uniquely gifted young artist” (Chicago Classical Review), Dante has performed for organizations including Long Beach Opera, BAM, Lampo, the Kitchen, National Sawdust, and Issue Project Room; for festivals including the Resonant Bodies Festival, Performa, the Latino Music Festival, and Visiones Sonoras; and institutions including Harvard University, Columbia University, Oberlin Conservatory, New England Conservatory, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern University. Dante’s creations and compositions explore the subconscious landscape behind the tangible world, and have been premiered with the Indexical Series, the University of Michigan, the Resonant Bodies Festival, Brooklyn Bound, the Experimental Sound Studio, and the Twin Cities New Music Festival, among others. She is co-founder and member of the ensemble Fonema Consort.
Bethany Younge’s music explores the manifold kinesthetic properties of musical performance. For her, the act of music-making cannot be divorced from the physical presence of the human instigator. Her works have been featured in New Music Darmstadt, Resonant Bodies Festival, Gaudeamus Muziekweek and she has worked with ensembles such as JACK Quartet, Distractfold, ASKO|Schönberg Ensemble, and TAK Ensemble. She was awarded a Stipend Prize for New Music Darmstadt, a National Sawdust commission prize, the 10th Mivos/Kanter prize, and the 2022/2023 Festival Mixtur of Barcelona commission prize. Younge is currently pursuing her DMA in Music Composition at Columbia University in New York.