Sarah Hennies, Richard Valitutto: SOVT

Composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1979. She started playing drums when she was nine years old; in her teens she played drums with local college punk rock bands. She attended the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign before receiving a Master's degree from University of California, San Diego. After graduating from UC San Diego in 2003, she moved to Austin, Texas, and began collaborating with guitarist Aaron Rusell in the group Weird Weeds.

In the ten years she was in Austin, she performed with the Austin New Music Co-op, The Weird Weeds and a variety of other projects. She later became a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College, a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. She lives in Ithaca, in upstate New York.

Hennies' list of works indicates that her first solo composition was "Roles (1998)" for piano, and her first composition for an ensemble was "Lives (2) (2003)" for percussion ensemble. Since 2006, she has released a stream of recordings as a performer, of works by such esteemed composers as John Cage, Radu Malfatti, Alvin Lucier, Jürg Frey, and Morton Feldman. Since 2008, there has been a steady flow of recordings of her own compositions; in 2013 she set up the record label Weighter Recordings for releasing her own work and other new and unusual music by living composers.

In 2017, pianist R. Andrew Lee commissioned "SOVT" which Hennies completed that year and Lee played the world premiere at Spectrum, Brooklyn, NYC, on March 2nd 2018. The rendition heard here was played by Richard Valitutto and recorded in March 2024 at Bard College by Hennies, who recorded and mixed it. The title "SOVT" stands for Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract, a form of vocal exercises that strengthen the voice by helping the vocal cords vibrate more efficiently. SOVT exercises can be practised by singing with a straw in the mouth, which regulates air pressure and reduces strain on the vocal folds. The album's cover picture shows the technique in action.

Although the album's sole track is listed as "SOVT (Semi-Occluded Vocal Trust) (55:27)" its fifty-five minutes contain a series of sounds produced by the piano in which all the strings were muted with Blue-Tac putty. Consequently, the rhythmic sound of the piece is an amalgam of piano sounds and percussion-like sounds, each one being played for several minutes, enough time and space to be fixed in the listener's head before the soundscape changes again. The best way to sample this beguiling, mesmerising music is to listen to the samples in the YouTube clip below.

In the years since she composed "SOVT" for Lee, Hennies has gone from strength to strength. She has presented her work internationally as both a composer and percussionist with notable performances across USA and Europe. As a composer, she has received commissions from a wide array of performers and ensembles. She has received a steady stream of grants and fellowships from various US sources. Yes, Hennies has come a long way since those punk rock days...