Joe Frawley Music 2010

It's 2010, as good a time as any to announce that a new CD will be released, with luck, in the spring. The working title is Left Cincinnati. Also felt like a good time to revise my bio and artist's statement. Here are the new versions, which are more in line with my current intentions.

Bio
Joe Frawley (b. July 4, 1971) is an experimental composer and pianist working out of Norwich, Connecticut whose works blur the boundary between music and sound art. By layering and juxtaposing original music with processed found sounds, field recordings, and recontextualized speech fragments, the composer creates challenging yet accessible sound assemblages bearing a hypnotic dreamlike quality. His works have been widely broadcast internationally and appear on several prominent experimental music compilations, including Vibrö No. 4: Music No Music, published by Double Entendre, Paris.

Artist's statement
I am a pianist, composer, and sound collage artist whose work falls between the cracks of several musical genres. My approach is to combine original music with found sound samples, which I process and arrange electronically to simulate subconscious states, such as dreams, trances, auditory hallucinations, involuntary memories, etc. The found sounds could be voices, sound effects, or musical samples appropriated from a variety of prerecorded media, as well as original field recordings. I particularly enjoy recontextualizing speech samples (a favorite source being public radio interviews) and combining them with other sounds to create new meanings. At the same time, I aim to place the spoken word on equal footing with music, thereby calling attention to the musical qualities of speech. As I continue to work, I find myself drawing increasingly from the female voice: I believe it is the most beautiful instrument in the world. I am fascinated and moved by the tone of female speech, singing, pre-vocal aspiration, sighs, laughter, and the wide variety of wordless vocal expressions for which there are no names. Due to the prevalence of spoken word samples, the resulting work tends to suggest a narrative, however I try not to impose a particular story upon the listener, preferring instead the individual and subjective interpretations of imaginative minds.


-JF