ABOUT
Elisa Faires has been singing since she was eight years old. Her early beginnings were rooted in choral singing, and in college she studied opera and classical music as well as electronic music. After studying at the University she spent three years dedicated to her study and singing in Opera and began to pursue a career. In fact, one of her teachers was the great Dr. Robert Moog. As a reaction to the her rigorous training in technique and repertoire, she began improvisation with others and started recording and performing her own experimental music. After having many auditions and classical concerts she decided the conventional Opera scene was not where she wanted to be. She went on to Bali Indonesia to study Classical Balinese gamelan and to experience the culture that surrounds the music. Since then she has performed and recorded with several different projects such as Paw of Zing, Imaginary Numbers, Xambuca, Hans Joachim Roedelius, Void Ensemble, and with Meg Mulhearn in their project Spectral Habitat. She has led many improvisational workshops and groups in creative music and sound over the years. For the past 7 years she has been experimenting with vocals and harmonies using multi tracking, loops, effects, and electronics. She previously has presented sound installations and interacted live in one of her pieces entitled "Photosynthesis" and another “Dialoga Aquila” for The Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center’s ReHappening festival. She was awarded a grant in 2007 from Met Life with their Meet the Composer grant.
She additionally composes music for Butoh dance, motion sculpture and performance art. She has composed and performed with Butoh Legacy Asheville, Anemone Dance Theater, and Cilla Vee Life Arts. She has been working with some of these dance companies for over than 10 years.
She has been touring since 2012 and has played at the More Ohr Less Festival in Lunz Austria, in Berlin, and in Budapest, and has toured extensively throughout the United States.
Though she has been recording and performing music for most of her life with others in many projects, Elisa completed her debut solo album, Elixir No .444, in 2012. Her second album, Photosynthesis, was released in 2014 on the Erototox Decodings record label. She has two new albums to be released later in 2017, one solo and one with Meg Mulhearn.
Voice, Electronics and effects (Live)
Upon first listen to Elisa Faires’ solo works, one may not be aware of her roots as a
former classical opera singer or that her travels to places like most of Europe, Nepal, Indonesia, India, Peru, Mexico, and Morocco would have any indication of finding their way into her music. In fact, Faires has performed around the world and has studied many different systems of r religious devotion, Faires’ inspiration stems from her devotion to the elements that exist in nature, reflected in her 2014 record Photosynthesis (Erototox Decodings etd0023). The record is purely a cappella, to some degree, as there are no additional or supplemental instruments other than the voice being used in the music where the voice is often the primary source or focus of interest. The result of this synthesis is a distinct and multi-dimensional immersive experience.
Faires approaches the voice as a musical instrument, exploring frequency ranges containing varying tonal qualities, augmented further with applied experimentation. She also uses looping, layering and spontaneous multi-tracking coupled with the use of effects and added electronic/synthetic synthesized nuances, creating what she calls a “one-woman-choir.” She uses harmonies, other instruments, and drones or intonations to create a wall of sound that otherwise could not be created physically by one person alone.
Though choirs traditionally carry the weight and connotation of liturgical context of her one-woman-choir and the focus of the record stems from the concept of singing to trees, which she believes to have sentient qualities indicative of living entities. Though her voice, she creates spaces using layering and effects, sonically interpreting elements and patterns found in nature.
Plant life, trees, flowers, mountains, precipitation, snowfall, the sun and the moon are archetypal influences as well as provide a sonic launchpad of sorts for mimicry and sonic exploration. The sounds rendered by these elements are achieved via vocal imitation of their signature sonic characteristics as well as providing sheer inspiration, setting the archetypal mood or quality of her pieces.
For the Performance
Elisa Faires’ current live pieces consist of reworked and revised songs from her recordings, as well as new explorations revealing more of her skills in electronic music composition.
These new pieces are primarily augmentations inspired by original compositions written by English composer and pianist Benjamin Britten. Of these are For the Flowers
(originally a tenor solo from Rejoice in the Lamb by Britten), which is completely reworked and transformed into an electronic art song. Britten’s lyrics are replaced by Faires’ own, although there are glimpses of the original Britten music revealed through the melody, harmonies and keyboard parts.
In Freezing Night (originally a choral piece from Britten's Ceremony of Carols) is completely reworked into another electronic art song as a devotional of gratitude to nature spirits, animals and the polar caps of the earth. Soundscapes consisting of arctic wildlife and an array of varied tonal ranges rendered by ice, whether in flux, clanking, or falling are used as samples within the track as elementals.
Another notable live piece performed by Faires is a piece from Photosynthesis titled Amaryllis, which is a body of work consisting of four distinct sections. Renaissance, Inuit, choral, and noise music were all influences on the composing of this piece