I experience music differently when I learn it as a performer than hearing it as an audience. One of my most profound experiences was with Sequenza III by Luciano Berio. Hardly contemporary looking at its composition date of 1965, this work marked my beginning as a contemporary voice performer. Sequenza III is a practical anthology to vocal extended techniques and their notations. Far more than that, It recognizes that each singing voice comes from a thinking mind, or so we hope, Sequenza III demands its interpreter to define her thoughts in order to discover and develop sound colour.
Sequenza III also created an alternative relationship for music and its text. Motivations of sound is no longer governed by language but by the random asking of the composer. The performer must surrender her logic and follow the process of destroying the ‘flow' words and meters often coerce upon music. In doing so, Sequenza III brings the performer and the audience successfully into the present. So it is after all, very con-temp-orary.
