Quaking AspenStephanie Lamprea & William Bond

Quaking Aspen showcases Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea’s incredible range. The new works on the album, which were composed for Lamprea and highlight poetry by female writers from the 19th through 21st centuries, feature everything from exquisite melodies to jagged-edged squeals to ominous hums. The focal point throughout is Lamprea’s vocals: She effortlessly switches tones and styles on every track, painting theatrical, detailed pictures that only need one thing to feel vivid—her voice.

— Vanessa Ague, 2.10.2022

The debut album from the Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea, there’s also spoken word from William Bond present, as words written by female poets from the 19th through 21st centuries are explored with a contemporary-classical and avant-garde approach.

Jason Eckardt’s “Quaking Aspen” opens the listen with fascinating, haunting vocal acrobatics, as guttural sounds are met with breathy moments of intrigue, and Donna Masini’s “Water Lilies I” follows with Bond’s expressive and vivid spoken word that unfolds with a poetic quality.

Elsewhere, “Bathing”, by Wang Lu, mixes talking and singing with a very unpredictable approach that’s capable of being operatic, while Hannah Selin’s “Mid-Day” showcases Lamprea’s impressive range and tone amid a droning quality.

Moving towards the end, George N. Gianopoulos’ “An Autumn Sunset: II ‘Lagooned In Gold’” offers a stunning delivery of sublime and soaring dynamcs from Lamprea’s powerful pipes, and “Flowers For Eurydice”, by James May, exits the listen with timeless beauty that resonates warmth and adventurousness.

An extremely unique affair that makes the most of Lamprea’s coloratura voice in both harsh and soothing ways, subtle electronics and Bond’s captivating performance makes for a highly experimental and unforgettable journey that you’ll want to take again.

— Tom Haugen, 4.16.2022

The best entry point to this intriguing album is through the singer, Colombian- American soprano Stephanie Lamprea, who is trained in operatic singing, but she now focuses on “new sounds and expressions,” according to her artist bio. That these new sounds depart radically from conventional singing can be gathered by another quotation from her bio: “She uses her voice as a mechanism of avant-garde performance art, creating ‘maniacal shifts of vocal production and character ... like an icepick through the skull’” (Jason Eckardt). Eckhardt is one of the six contemporary composers commissioned for this album, each providing a short work lasting between three and seven minutes for Lamprea to display her remarkable vocalism.

Since these gestures can be extreme (although one shouldn’t fear that they will uniformly act like icepicks through the skull), it is helpful that a speaker, William Bond, recites each text first. The titles of the poems parallel the titles of the musical settings except for James May’s Flowers for Eurydice, which is based on Hilda Doolittle’s “Eurydice,” Part VII. Like the composers, the poets are contemporary, with the exception of Doolittle (1886–1961) and Edith Wharton (1862–1937), the author of “An Autumn Sunset.” To complete this background sketch, the youngest composer here is May (b. 1994), and the album’s prevailing theme is Nature in a range of moods from the elegiac to the apocalyptic. The writers are all women and, I believe, all American. So are the composers, although Wang Lu (b. 1982), who teaches at Brown University, is described online as Chinese-born without reference to whether she is now an American citizen.

As you’d anticipate, giving a general sketch is far easier than describing the avant-garde techniques Lamprea employs. I am not even able to say how the non-singing techniques are notated or how much Lamprea is improvising. But in essence we get a spectacular range of vocalizing from singing across a very wide range, recitation, Sprechgesang, screams, coloratura passages, glissandos, and “noises” in the throat, all of which Lamprea produces with total commitment and impressive technique. There is the occasional use of electronic augmentation. For example, Water Lilies I by the San Francisco- based composer Kurt Rohde (b. 1966) “uses amplified voice, electronic filters, and three distinct head positions to mirror [poet Donna] Masini’s poetic form, gently swaying and inwardly accumulating.”

The most entertaining text, and the only one in prose, is Masini’s “Bathing,” which begins with the weirdly matter-of-fact line, “One thing about after the apocalypse is you can’t get dirt on you—I mean you can, but you better not—it stings and itches like crazy, and I don’t know about you but I can’t get anything accomplished if I don’t feel clean.” Because the music throughout is explorative, you can’t expect the compositional style to match the mood of the text, and quite often no discernible mood can be identified, thanks to the all- over-the-map vocal techniques on display. Sometimes Lamprea recites words in a clear voice, but just as often the included texts must be followed closely.

The program notes are very brief and provide no information about the composers. In this experimental realm, it isn’t possible to pick out which work is good, better, or best. I responded with intrigued curiosity to everything, and Lamprea is such a compelling performer that it wasn’t at all difficult to remain engaged. She currently lives in Glasgow and is working toward a doctorate in performing art at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. My only reservation concerns the speaker, because Bond, who is also in Glasgow and holds a Ph.D. from Northeastern University in Boston, has a plummy English voice but not the skills of a professional actor/speaker. He lends an amateurish air to an album that is otherwise superior, and often startling, in every respect.

— Huntley Dent, 7.15.2022

"Quaking Aspen” is a name for the deciduous North American tree officially known as populus tremuloides, and its quaking or trembling leaves is due to its flexible flattened leafstalks. As a jumping-off point for the debut solo album of a startlingly gifted soprano, it may be an odd choice, but Stephanie Lamprea’s new album is refreshingly far from a typical work of art.

Lamprea, an accomplished vocalist and educator, specializes in contemporary classical repertoire, using her coloratura voice as a mechanism of avant-garde performance art. Her voice can express traditional operatic methods but often takes the form of sputters, throat noises, and other modern techniques. With Quaking Aspen, she uses her ample talents to interpret poetry and prose that spans decades with the aid of a variety of composers.

The opening track is a bit of an outlier; composer Jason Eckardt’s “Populus Tremuloides: Quaking Aspen” is a wordless soundscape meant to represent the trembling of these trees in the Catskill Mountains. Lamprea dives into the composition with groaning, hissing, buzzing, trilling, and full-throated operatic vocalizing. It’s a disarming piece of music but manages to pull off the unusual trick of bringing nature to vibrant life.

Following the first track, Quaking Aspen takes on a specific structure: William Bond narrates a poem, followed by a composer’s musical interpretation, sung by Lamprea. These interpretations take on a variety of forms. Donna Masini’s poem “Water Lilies I” (taken from her collection 4:30 Movie) is given an ethereal treatment by composer Kurt Rohde, as Lamprea uses long, drawn-out notes and is aided by a variety of effects such as deep, cavernous reverb, and claustrophobic compression. This kind of back-and-forth in the treatment of Lamprea’s voice gives off the striking feeling of multiple characters interpreting the poetry.

Sometimes, however, the source material comes from an unusual place. “Bathing” is based on Lucy Corin’s short story in the collection One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses. Lamprea recites Corin’s words basically verbatim and, as directed by Wang Lu’s composition, stretches out the words, sings them, shouts them, and even screams. The story was inspired by the COVID pandemic, which likely accounts for Lamprea’s manic tone.

One of the best-known poets represented on Quaking Aspen is Edith Wharton, whose “An Autumn Sunset” is broken down into a two-song cycle composed by George N. Gianopoulos. Like a great deal of this fascinating record, Lamprea dives into atonal revelations while infusing the piece with stunning coloratura passages.

But one of the stunning highlights of Quaking Aspen is “Mid-Day”, based on the poem of the same name by Hilda Doolittle (who was published under H.D.). Hannah Selin’s composition for soprano and electronics has Lamprea experimenting with coloratura methods alongside clapping and slapping actions with a droning loop underneath it all, recalling a medieval chant atmosphere. This type of combination gives the impression of the spanning of centuries as if Hildegard Von Bingen were collaborating with Amirtha Kidambi. The composition’s adventurous and sometimes foreboding nature is a perfect match for the source material, as H.D.’s poem equates nature with cycles of death and rebirth.

Quaking Aspen is an unusual yet fascinating, deeply enjoyable work of art and can be compared to difficult-to-interpret postmodern tomes. Like the dense novels of William Gaddis or Thomas Pynchon, enjoyment of it requires a particular frame of mind, but once it clicks, Quaking Aspen is a magical, intense, and deeply satisfying journey.

— Chris Ingalls, 1.14.2022