Not Strictly Speaking: The Voice is the Instrument with Elaine Mitchener & Joan La Barbara

The voice is something we all share and yet rarely do we explore the full range of our instrument. Ahead of Assembly at Somerset House we talk to two vocal artists who stretch the capacities of the voice as a sound producing instrument to look at the ways the voice can channel meaning beyond words; voice artist and composer Elaine Mitchener, who is resident at Somerset House Studios; and the pioneer of Extended Vocal Technique, the renowned vocal artist and composer Joan La Barbara.  

Elaine’s vocal work looks at ways of speaking beyond language and explores moments of historical injustice through vocalisation and movement. In her piece for Assembly, 'These Cost The Earth', she explores the dynamics of waste consumerism, in particular the environmental and human impact of the clothes we send to landfill.  She uses the Chairman’s Staircase in the New Wing at Somerset House as the site for a choreographed piece which articulates this destructive cycle, giving life to old clothes and evoking the journeys they have been on. 

The groundbreaking vocalist Joan La Barbara is one of the first artists to play with extended vocal technique, a technique which uses the voice as a sound producing instrument.  As a performer she has worked with Cage, Feldman, Reich and Glass and as a composer and improviser she has been writing her own material since the 1970s. As one of the early pioneers of this form of vocal experimentation, we hear as Joan unpacks how she developed her instrument, her work with imaginary language and the idea of super presence in relation to performance.

Not Strictly Speaking Series 
The voice is the first sound we encounter and the first instrument we learn to play, we are subject to the disembodied voice of politicians while the communal voice is raised in protest.  In conjunction with this year’s Assembly at Somerset House, this 3 part podcast series explores different manifestations of the voice and how it informs our ways of thinking. 

Each episode follows one artist featured in the 2024 programme, as they unpack their work with the voice in dialogue with another artist. Vocalist and composer Elaine Mitchener is joined by the pioneer of extended vocal technique Joan La Barbara to explore the voice as an instrument, looking at how the human voice can channel meaning without words. Artist Prem Sahib plays with the shape shifting nature of political speech and its potential to inhabit other bodies alongside composer Felicia Atkinson on the mercurial nature of recording, while the vocal work of sound artist Vivienne Griffin is placed in dialogue with artist Helen Cammock on the concept of the voice as a site of resistance. 

The sound for the series is composed by French composer and sound artist Felicia Atkinson who crafts a series of bespoke sound commissions for each episode.

Commissioned by Somerset House Studios
Producer - Alannah Chance
Exec Producer - Eleanor Ritter-Scott
Series Composer - Felicia Atkinson
Mix - Harry Murdoch

Assembly was supported by PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund for Organisations, John S Cohen Foundation, Kitmapper, The Wire Magazine and Goethe Institute London.