Renowned contemporary opera composer Chaya Czernowin and boundary-defying research artist and performer Angelo Custodio talk about voice: bodily constraints, endless opportunities, and inevitable existentialism.

“I’m not interested in creating a beautiful moment of art, but rather to create a situation where if it’s done well, then everybody is in a kind of universe that is happening in front of their ears.”

“I always use the metaphor of a narrow bridge where you can fall to two sides. One side you can fall to is the cliche. Pathos, opera, etc. Boom, you are drowned. Dead. The other side you can fall to is manipulation: it’s new, it’s so amazing! […] You don’t want that either. […] That’s why it’s so amazing to work with voice.”
(Chaya Czernowin)

“The strategy for me is just so that I can create this situational moment that is less safe, in certain ways, and that creates an opportunity to have a more active presence […] of the audience that allows me space to push some boundaries”.

"Beyond the discursive part of the voice - if there are words at all - there is this layer of affect that is not controllable”
(Angelo Custodio)

Angelo Custodio is a research based artist currently based in Amsterdam. For years trained as a classical singer, Angelo explores the performative use of the voice and perverts embodied singing techniques to develop sonic encounters with the vulnerable, such as queer bodies and bodies with disability. You can discover his current research process can through an performative encounter QueerAble In/stabilities that has been presenter recently. Angelo has also recently collaborated with Boris Bezemer and National Dutch Opera and Ballet in the production of online opera Figaro (solo): Bring me a Stormwhich serves as a counterpart to Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.

Chaya Czernowin is world known composer, currently teaching at Harvard University, USA as a composition professor – the first woman to hold this title in this institution. She holds numerous awards, and her music has been performedthroughout the world, by some of the best orchestras and performers of new music. She is also currently a composer in residence in Salzburg Festival and in Luzern festival. Her most recent work, Heart Chamber was premiered and commissioned by the Deutsche Opere Berlin last year and is coming out in a DVD format this spring.

Sound in Action

Sound in Action discusses sound in various sociopolitical scenarios. By bringing academics, activists and practitioners together, we aim at questioning notions of expertise and highlighting the importance of pluralistic knowledge productions. Funded by the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis and the Music Studies department of the University of Amsterdam.