Vocamov Rites' "Live at They, Who Sound"

Improvisation is ephemeral, and attempts to document it often fail because they neglect to take this into account. When what is presented is a total sensory experience, including not only the sounds being produced but the way they interact with the space and the audience, a mere audio recording cannot suffice. When physical movement ("spontaneous choreography") is added to the performance, a visual record becomes necessary. One thinks of the collaboration between guitarist Derek Bailey and dancer Min Tanaka, released as an LP record titled Music and Dance. The audio document is evocative, capturing the sounds of rain as it causes the roof of a building to partially collapse, but it is by its nature incomplete.

The three performers in Vocamov Rites -- vocalists and multi-instrumentalists Esin Gunduz and Justin Rodriguez-Jones and dancer Paty Lorena Solorzano -- attempt to address this by releasing the record of their March 2025 performance at Houston's Lawndale Arts Center (under the auspices of curator David Dove and his creative music organization, Nameless Sound) as a digital download with accompanying video. Live at They, Who Sound -- out April 9 via Bandcamp -- provides a vibrant and engaging model of how such documentation can be effectively accomplished.

Vocamov Rites' set begins with the disembodied voices of all three performers reverberating in the space. On the video, you can see the curious and somewhat disquieted responses of the audience to this first encounter. Gradually, Gunduz and Rodriguez-Jones make their way to their instruments, vocalizing wordlessly as they go, creating passing harmonies and counterpoint, like ghosts moving through resonant space. Gunduz uses air to activate her instruments -- breath to move the reeds on her tremelo and bass harmonicas, a strap attached to her leg to operate the bellows on her harmonium. Rodriguez-Jones balances his synthesizer atop a toy piano and uses it to create drones, pulse, and oscillation, along with snippets of melody.

Solorzano enters the space up the aisle between the rows of seated audience members, exploring boundaries, "rotating the body in all its planes" (to paraphrase the injunction in a Harry Partch title), moving like a marionette riding waves of sound, now stiff and mechanical, now balletic or acrobatic. She mirrors the sound of voices and instruments, even interacts with Gunduz's harmonium at one point. By the time the three performers begin to wind down their conversation, the viewer/listener feels centered and satiated. There's no substitute for being in the room when such an event takes place, but this representation is as close as we can get without traveling back in time and space.