User:Josephine Truman/sandbox

Jo Truman
Jo (Josephine) Truman (b.1958) is an Australian singer, composer and performer whose focus is the voice and its ultimate potentials. With the help of a range of 3.3 octaves, she has developed a unique repertoire of Extended Vocal Techniques and Microtonal singing.

She begun her career as an improvising singer workoing with Sandy Evans, JIm Denley, Jon Rose and the Relative Band.

In 1985 she received a prestigious International Study Award from The Music Board, Australia Council for the Arts which took her to Europe to research and perform Improvisation and Extended Vocal Techniques.

There she worked and toured with prominent musicians and composers and leading lights in new music, jazz and improvisation, such as Maggie Nicols,Phil Minton ("Songs From A Prison Diary, Le Mans Jazz festival and the Musica Festival, Strasbourg). Tony Buck (Fiets Festival), Vladimir Tchekasin and Vladimir Tarasov (1st International Jazz Festival, Vilnius), Fred Frith (LMC Festival), Peter Kowald and Gunda Gottschalk & Global Village and Bull's Eye Orchestra, Lindsay Cooper & Robyn Schulkowsky and also worked with John Cage, as a contributing singer in a performance of his epic "Song Books Opera" (Den Hague, 1988). She toured the DDR (East Germany) with Jon Rose and Joe Saches.

She also composed and performed work for various ensembles and festivals, including "Ways and Meanings", "the eareye seeshears", and toured with George Lewis, Fred Van Hove and Johannes Bauer; Jon Rose, Joe Sachs (DDR), and Amanda Stewart (Voices Unvoiced). Truman was commissioned to record a CD Sdreamings, by Staalplaat records, Amsterdam, which included collaborations with composer Jean Schwarz and percussionist Bart Fermie.

Truman found a sympathetic medium in radio for her forays into sound and music as well as writing. Radio commissions include "Cell Songs" (ABC Classic FM), the Horspiel "Sdreamings" (AudioAkustisches Kunst,WDR3 Koln), "The Mirrored Cry", "The House In the Sky" (a suite of her poetry and prose with music) for The Listening Room (ABC Classic FM), "The Transparent Messenger" (The Europeans' ) and "Deprem" (Radio Eye, Radio National), and the mini-series based on her Masters of Music Research thesis, "Extreme Throats" (ABC Classic FM.) Her latest commission with West Deutsche Rundfunk (WDR3 Cologne, Germany), "Bridge to Otherness" was broadcast in November 2012. This work drew on narratives of 'Self/Other/Place' focusing on the region of the Blue Mountains where she lives. Several of her works for voice have been broadcast on the ABC and local radio, including "Singing In Tongues", "Keening Raga", "Flock", "Call and Response" and "Sdreamings".

She was commissioned to perform two works for voice and ensemble for the MONA FOMA festival in Hobart, by curator, Brian Ritchie,and in January 2013 performed these works at the Princes Wharf and The St. Mary's Cathedral Centre in Hobart Tasmania for an enthusiastic audience. She is currently working on a collaborative composition with the well known Icelandic composer Hildigunnur Runnarsdottir, financially supported by the Icelandic Broadcasting Corporation. This will result in a kammer opera to be performed by Truman and ensemble in Reyjkavic in Iceland in 2014.

Truman has a BA in Communications (UTS), a Masters in Music (Composition, with High Distinction) from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and was a guest student at the Koninklijk Conservatorium, studying with Gilius van Bergeijk and Dick Raijmaakers.

Her current research involves exploring the parameters of the embodied and disembodied voice and voice transformations through electronic media. Truman integrates her drawing and painting skills into her multimedia work in an ongoing exploration of the relationship between visual and sound arts.

Grants and Awards:- 1983:- Special Purpose Award from the Australia Council (Music Board). 1985:-International study grant from the Music Board to continue her study and performance of improvisation in England and Holland.

1993:- Live-in stipend at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. During her residency, she wrote and directed her work A Bite In Time - a three-part sound/music installation multimedia work.

2004:-PRSS grant from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music to go to New York to research contemporary vocal improvisation perform at Phil Niblock's Experimental Intermedia festival.

Qualifications:- BA Communications, UTS MMUs (Sydney Conservatorium) with High Distinction.