Radio Opera Redefined: Immersive Sound, Improvisation, and Sonic Freedom w/ Yvette Janine Jackson

Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and sound artist who creates immersive compositions, drawing on a wide array of genres and life experiences. Her compositions have been commissioned internationally for a variety of mediums. Yvette Jackson often works in a mode she calls radio opera, which combines orchestral composition, modular synthesis, sampling, voice acting, and improvisation. Her work has been commissioned and screened at some of the biggest festivals and events across the globe. Having learned tape splicing, analog synthesis, and computer music at the historic Columbia Computer Music Center in New York. Yvette now works as associate professor at Harvard University. 

In the public episode, we talk about her concept of radio opera and we take a deep dive into her album Freedom, and explore the unusual personal history that has informed her unconventional composition style—discussing things like theater sound design and her four years spent 8,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains, and how that changed the way she listens. 

Supporters on Patreon will get another 35 minutes where we get into the technical details of how Yvette puts these multimodal electroacoustic works together. And a discussion of composing for the Carillon, the enormous bell tower instrument. sign up to listen Patreon.com/phantompower.

00:00 Introduction

00:39 Meet Yvette Janine Jackson

02:08 Exploring Radio Opera

04:19 Yvette’s Recent Achievements

05:12 Defining the Artist

06:01 The Concept of Radio Opera

08:25 Creating Immersive Experiences

13:10 Album ‘Freedom’ and Its Themes

13:56 Narratives in ‘Freedom’

14:16 Invisible People: A Radio Opera

19:54 Destination Freedom: A Journey

24:02 The Art of Sound and Emotion

29:10 Diving into Technical and Biographical Insights

29:51 Early Musical Influences and Education

31:57 College Years and Electronic Music Exploration

35:04 Theater and Radio Drama Experiences

40:17 Living in Colorado and Soundscape Studies

48:40 PhD Journey and Integrative Studies

50:39 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Yvette Jackson: My work has a lot of things that were presented to me at some point as binaries, like, you know, improvisation, composition, acoustic, electronic, and for me, I guess part of my practice is kind of blurring these lines. 

Introduction: This is Phantom Power.

Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a show about sound. Sound studies. Sound art. All things sound. My name is Mac Hagood, and my guest today is Yvette Janine Jackson. Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and sound artist who creates immersive compositions drawing on a wide array of genres and life experiences.

Her electroacoustic chamber and orchestral compositions have been commissioned internationally for concert. Theater, installation and screen. Yvette Jackson often works in a mode she calls radio opera, which combines orchestral composition, modular synthesis, sampling, voice acting, improvisation, a whole lot of things in order to create what the guardian called immersive non-visual films.

Her work has been commissioned by or appeared on the stages and screens of Carnegie Hall Big Years Festival. PBS and the Venice Music Bien Oh and Wave Farm. A lot of listeners will be familiar with Wave Farm, with whom Yvette has had a long history. She is also the only volunteer firefighter that I personally know who learned tape splicing analog synthesis and computer music at the Historic Columbia Computer Music Center in New York.

Oh, and did I mention that she’s a professor at Harvard? Yvette and I met at the Residual Noise Festival at Brown a couple months ago, and I so enjoyed talking with her that I wanted to bring you in on the conversation. In this wide ranging chat, we talk about her concept of radio opera and we take a deep dive into her album Freedom, which the wire calls one of the most unique.

Releases to chronicle the Black American experience. We then get into her unusual personal history, which has informed her unconventional composition style, and we discuss things like theater, sound design, and the four years she spent 8,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains and how that changed the way she listens.

Supporters on Patreon will get another 35 minutes where we get into the technical details of how Yvette puts together these multimodal electroacoustic works. And then we get to my favorite part of the conversation in which we truly nerd out on the Caron. Which is the enormous Bell Tower instrument that she has actually composed several pieces for.

And unless there is some Caron podcast out there, and I suppose there probably is, but I’m pretty sure that this is the deepest Caron conversation you’re ever going to hear. And then. Yvette does her what’s good segment where she suggests something good to read, something good to listen to, something good to do, and her picks are every bit as unconventional as you might expect from this introduction.

That is all at Phantom Power’s Patreon page. patreon.com/phantom Power. You can become a member for as little as $3 a month, and we could really use your support. I’m still on this mission to try to cover the production costs for this podcast with your donation, so please consider getting all of the full length interviews at patreon.com/phantom Power.

Okay, here it is, my conversation with a one of a kind human being, Yvette, Janine Jackson. Yvette, welcome to the show. 

Yvette Jackson: Thanks for inviting me. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah, so it’s been a while since we chopped it up over breakfast at the Hampton Inn. Classy, you’ve had, an amazing year. I think we are actually able to sort of break some news on this podcast that you just received a Herb Bert Award , in the arts for 2025, which is like a big $75,000 thing.

Yvette Jackson: Yeah, I mean, I’m excited for multiple reasons. I mean, especially, it’s at a time when obviously, you know, arts are being cut and so it’s an honor, but also a responsibility, I think. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, I mean, I think with that was part of the conversation that we had before, it was just about the kinds of challenges and opportunities of, of trying to do creative work in this moment.

Um. You also got promoted to associate professor at Harvard. That’s amazing. Yeah. Congrats. Thank you very much. I’m just gonna toot your horn for a minute year. Alright. Yeah. But maybe, maybe, um, we can just sort of start with the basics of why you’re getting these accolades and promotions, which is your work, which I, I think is just truly innovative.

Can you maybe just talk a little bit about how you would describe yourself as an artist? What genres do you work in? 

Yvette Jackson: All right. Um, I, I feel like I’m not consistent with this answer. I was just asked this question two days ago, so I mean, I think composer and sound artist, but I’ve used different terms.

Sound designer, installation artist, the composer has always been a part mm-hmm. Of that definition, and I guess musician. As well. Performer ensemble director. But yeah, I like composer. Simple. One word. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah. Your work, I mean, one, one word that I’ve heard you use before to describe your work is radio opera.

You have this group, the radio opera workshop. Can you maybe talk a little bit about what you see? That genre as, would you call it a genre radio author? 

Yvette Jackson: Um, I mean, I, I think it is. I mean, the term is used in different terms now and I think it also was used. In different ways during the early days of radio because I mean, historically you can find older ads for, you know, we’ve got the first radio opera, and you can see this on ads in the US and in Europe.

And usually what was meant by that term, radio opera was an opera that was being broadcast on the radio. Mm-hmm. And then you have pieces like NBC Commission, John Carlo Otti for the Old Mate and the Thief. And I think that commission was specifically for radio. So you know, as a composer, having to think about how to capture that spectacle over the air.

In the minds of the listeners. Um, I use the term a little bit differently. So the radio for me is pointing to the golden age of radio drama, which I am a fan of, and then opera. Just because initially when I started using this term about 13 years ago, 14 years ago, I was. Picturing this concept as these series of large works, and so mm-hmm.

Yeah. Taking these two ideas and it probably, I, I mean, I think definitely I also was influenced and maybe got this term from Anthony Davis with whom I was studying at the time that I started calling my works radio opera. 

Mack Hagood: He started calling your works that 

Yvette Jackson: No, I, I, I think the, the term came up in a conversation that we were having uhhuh.

I had taken one of his opera classes and he knew about my interest in radio drama. And so, I mean, I think that there’s a connection there. And then someone also, uh, had a conversation two days ago thinking about like violin, Bret. Using radio opera and having like the audience kind of interactive and you know, an interactive component of it and singing along with it, which, I mean, initially I wasn’t thinking of any type of interactivity, which, yeah, now I am.

The initial idea was I was creating these electroacoustic compositions to be experienced in the. A darkened theater as dark as the law would permit. You know, you have the exit signs there and you know, the performance instructions were often to be performed at an uncomfortable volume. And so you have people congregated in a theater, you know, black box proscenium space.

They may be immediately seated next to someone they know, but. You know, also seated around strangers and then experiencing this collective listening experience in different types of venues and darkness. So you’re aware of other people’s surroundings, but maybe that’s not your focus. Although, I mean, I don’t know.

I think, yeah, maybe it, it is also you do become aware of the other people. Yeah. 

Mack Hagood: I mean that does sort of bring to mind that. Concentrated form of listening that some radio scholars have said occurred in the early days of radio in the golden era of radio drama, where something is coming alive in the mind.

And in part, it’s facilitated by the fact that there’s just one sense that’s sort of being activated. 

Yvette Jackson: Yeah, the idea of the Theater of the mind really is what initially drove my concept of radio opera so that, you know, bringing together the sound effects, whether, you know, they’re things I designed in A DAW or Foley, like had a creaky uh.

Bedroom door that I used in a lot of pieces and a crackly radiator. So using these sound effects and the dialogue and music coming together to produce some type of image, which I mean in a way then becomes you’re asking the listener to participate because not everyone is going to choose to or be capable of or want to, you know, imagine anything.

Mack Hagood: Yeah, I mean, and, and just to give people, I mean we’re definitely gonna play some, some small snippets of, of your work, but it’s kind of hard to give a sense of these pieces because they are so heterogeneous and pulling from so many different, not just genres, but sort of forms of instrumentation and modes of sort of addressing.

The listener. I mean there’s elements that sound like field recordings. There are things that are modular synth sounds. There are elements that sound like noise, but then there’s also traditional European art, music things happening there. There might be a snatches of, of something that sounds a little more like contemporary r and b or something, but then like there’s gospel, like there just seems to be.

Uh, just a world like you, you were sort of world building in this way that I think the, the radio opera. Term kind of gives you that sense of world building. 

Yvette Jackson: Yeah, I mean, maybe I should think about my practice more in terms of world building. I mean, occasionally I do consciously think of it that way.

Uhhuh. Um, I think initially I was concerned and interested about the expression of identity through sound. And, you know, I’ve been exposed to a lot of. Things and ways of seeing the world. And I think that comes through in the music, but also thinking about the way I was raised, educated, not just formally in a school, but culturally, societally.

Hmm. I mean, I, I guess, for example, my work has a lot of things that were presented to me at some point as binaries. Like, you know, improvisation, composition, acoustic, electronic. And for me, I guess part of my practice is kind of. Blurring these lines because I, I, I felt like I’ve always been told by someone, not that you need to listen to anybody telling you anything.

Yeah. That, you know, you can do this or you can do that. And I’m like, why can’t I do both or all 12 of these things or whatever. Or, you know, Yvette, you should focus and narrow down on this one specific thing. And I think radio opera is something that allows me to bring together all these things that.

External voices have told me that I can’t do all of these things. I’m like, oh yeah. Um, yeah. So it’s a way to do that. And then also to be able to, as radio opera becomes more of a social activity for me, if I can call it that. Um, it becomes a way to interact with more and more people like Yeah, different types of people, which I find interesting.

And including the listener. ’cause the listener is a collaborator as well. 

Mack Hagood: I mean, your 2021 album was called Freedom. And you know, I think it’s speaking thematically to some very serious issues about freedom. Um, I think on both sides of the record, but it also is expressive of that kind of freedom to just transgress binaries and boundaries as you choose.

And it’s more powerful for doing that. Definitely. 

Yvette Jackson: I mean, yeah, I think this exploration of freedom comes on multiple levels. I mean, I think more recently thinking about freedom just in like forms of expression or questioning what, what exactly is meant by freedom, and I think maybe each conversation has to redefine it because it’s used in so many ways.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Mack Hagood: Would, do you wanna talk about the narratives on, if we talk about radio opera being a narrative, could we maybe talk about the narratives on each side of this record? The first side is called Destination Freedom. I. 

Yvette Jackson: Sure. Um, yeah, the first side is estimation freedom, but I’ll start with the, with the B side, invisible people.

Okay. A radio opera, because that was the first piece composition that I used this term, radio opera. Oh, really? Um, yeah. To describe it,

you are 10,000 times more amenable in his eyes than the most hateful. Venomous servant is in ours.

Yvette Jackson: I mean, the full title of what’s on the album is Invisible People, and then parenthetically a radio opera. Then I think there’s like a colon episode one. Um, uh, oh. See, I for, I’ve forgotten my own title. It’s so long, but the fact that it’s called episode one. That’s really the third iteration of Invisible people.

The first piece started out as a 10 minute tech sound composition using a lot of the sound bites that end up on the album and that have been a part of kind of subsequent iterations of the composition. So the piece. Started, um, around the time that Barack Obama had approved marriage equality. And at the time, as I said, I was, I was working with Anthony Davis and he nudged me to like find a topic that was meaningful to me.

Um, and so I started. Just kind of having conversations about the topic. So yeah, my process is conversations with people, um, kind of armchair investigating, you know, looking up things on the internet, YouTube websites, looking at historical text, which all then be kind of come source material for this composition.

So initially it started off as an essay, which featured different. Voices of politicians and religious figures, academics responding to Barack Obama’s approval of marriage equality. But the title, invisible People, was really pointing to all the people that the media left out of this conversation, which I thought were like the center of, you know, this focus.

And so I became. Intrigued by the voices, I guess the media choose to highlight or the voices people choose to listen to in certain situations. And what about everyday people? Mm-hmm. Who somehow become invisible in certain situations. So that, that was side B. 

Mack Hagood: Well, that, and, and just to spell it out a little bit more, like there’s a lot of samples of voices of.

Preachers and, uh, I sound, I thought I recognized the voice of Louis Farrakhan. Like there, there are people from the pulpit decrying marriage equality and the decision that Obama made. 

Yvette Jackson: I work with F Techs in the way that playwright Charles me does. I used to do sound for theater, so a lot of the techniques I got come from that period.

And so. Yes, it includes, you know, I include politicians and as you said, spiritual leaders, clergy, um, but also internet trolls. Mm-hmm. People from the present and the past. I try to collect as many voices as possible. Obviously, there’s still some kind of framing by me as the composer, so I try to show multiple sides, but the mere fact that I’m one person, putting these together introduces some type of bias, but.

There’s this collection of voices. Even when you hear actors or non-actor speaking these lines, they’re taken from things that have, yeah, I could have read in the comments of a YouTube video or some historical document. Mm-hmm. And I, you know, I may change a word or two, but for the most part, I try to stick with what people have actually said.

You know, without. To do it as, as carefully as I, as I can do without running into any issues. 

Mack Hagood: Well, I mean, the, the comments kinda speak for themselves and, but I mean, 

Yvette Jackson: I mean, then I’m also, I mean, there’s the comments that are on the recording, but then I’m also interested in the comments and the conversations that happen after the recording.

It may be. I should clarify. When I say recording, I mean I’m thinking about these initial performances, which were in the dark in theater with multichannel surrounding the listener. I always, or I usually am, if I see any live performance, I’m at the back of the house, which kind of comes from this habit of.

When I used to run sound for live performances, I like to see the audience as part of that performance. And so with invisible people, especially those first few performances of the fixed media, seeing how people respond, you know, are they squirming? Like sometimes people wanna laugh at parts ’cause there are some moments of humor, but then.

Because it’s so serious. People may be afraid to laugh. And so, I mean, and then that comes in with the collective listening, like how you might respond to something while listening by yourself versus listening surrounded by friends, surrounded by strangers in darkness, but aware of other bodies. These all play a role and I think they’re all a part of what it is that I’m calling radio opera.

Mack Hagood: Yeah. Yeah. So while we’re at it, you wanna talk about side A. As well. 

Yvette Jackson: Yeah. Site a destination. Freedom is a journey because invisible people was so text heavy. I was curious about this idea of telling a story without relying on words. And so I mean, there, there are voices embedded in there, but they’re not intelligible.

That is by design.

So there’s kind of a predecessor to Destination Freedom called swan, which is like a, it’s just under 10 minute piece, which again, the source materials for that. I have an ensemble, so there’s studio sessions at the ensemble. But I don’t use the mixture, you know, polished recordings from the ensemble. I may use, you know, the overhead mics on the drums to capture the cello and use that.

Mm-hmm. Or, you know, there’s a part in there which I find really beautiful, which was before the percussionist was ready, you know, he was still moving something and he got like this kind of clunking thing that sounded like changes. Oh, yeah. Which to me then fit with the narrative. So the, the narrative for both pieces told him three.

Kind of sections starts in the hold of a cargo ship trafficking Africans to the Americas, that it’s kind of this disorienting middle section and then kind of thrust you forward to this kind of cathartic release. You know, like this search for freedom and what feels like this cathartic arrival to it.

And in my mind, in both pieces, there’s kind of like a coda because history repeats itself. But yeah, so. Destination freedom is basically an expansion of that idea. And I think what gets introduced with this is, I guess, the version of me as a performer of modular synthesizers. Mm-hmm. And so I still have the chamber ensemble, but then I have kind of these improvise synthesize sessions.

Like I said, there’s, there are voices in there, but they’re very unintelligible. And there’s actually some moments of kind of like sound design, like working with, um, the modular synth where. It’s kind of like this auditory illusion of like, I hear voices in, in there, but there, but there’s actually not any voices, which I think points to kind of a larger thing I’m interested in is like getting electronic sounds to sound acoustic and acoustic sounds to sound electronic.

Getting beautiful things to sound ugly and ugly things to sound beautiful. ’cause really it’s just a shifting, like you’re just shifting one’s frame. The way you experience the world like. The world itself is not changing. How you view the world is changing. 

Mack Hagood: I mean, this raises a question that I just never cease to be fascinated with when it comes to sound art and experimental music.

Because so much of it is conceptual today. Right? And it seems to me that it’s sort of like the way that the conceptual concerns of an artist get translated into something we actually hear is sort of what defines. The contemporary artist. And what I think is so interesting is that like on side A and side B, there’s two, as you suggested, like totally opposite strategies.

Like one is very textual and we know precisely what’s happening. Well, not precisely, but we have a very strong sense of the concerns that brought you to the table here. Right? Whereas the other one is telling. A, a nar, there’s still a narrative there, but it’s through sound. And if you didn’t know the title of the piece, you know it, the, I guess the question is, will some listeners know what’s fully happening or not?

Or would they be relating to it on another level? And I just find that fascinating, these differing strategies. 

Yvette Jackson: I mean, I think in some ways Destination Freedom is more accessible, even though, I mean, there’s no text to guide the listener, or maybe I’m suggesting that because there’s no text to guide the listener, it can be more accessible.

I mean, uh, in Workshops of swan, which was the predecessor, one of the participants was like, there’s no way you’re going to get people to know what it’s like in the hold of a cargo ship. Mm-hmm. And I’m like, well. First of all, I’m not trying to force people to have any feeling or think or you know, experience.

What I anticipate is that people are gonna come in with their own lived experiences and preexisting knowledge, and I. Their framing of the audio is going to be based on that. So each person is going to interpret this in a different way. And that is okay, like that’s, that’s what I’m more curious and excited about is like, what is it that you are hearing in this piece?

What are you experiencing? So even. On the text, heavy invisible people. It has different meaning. If you recognize the voices well. Okay. If you speak the language, if you recognize the voices, yeah. If you’ve lived through certain experiences. Some of my works can be triggering, so if you’ve had certain experiences, uh, maybe they’re harder to listen to than other types of things.

But yeah, I mean this is something that I’m interested in. It’s like language and the absence of language are. I was going to kind of put myself down a, a trap in some linguists, it’d be like, oh, that’s not what language is. Um, uh, but I mean, I mean, I don’t wanna go into the thing where people say, oh, music is a language.

Because I mean, I think that’s definitely where the linguists will come in and say, no, it’s not a language because of X, Y, and Z. But I think maybe the communication is. Maybe more about kind of emotional or I think about emotional contour during the compositional stages than any kind of semantic meaning from text or even program notes.

’cause of the program notes. I upset people ’cause I don’t like to have program notes. Um, 

Mack Hagood: well in fact, you, you told me like, um, because you have a German language radio opera coming up soon and you’re like, I don’t wanna talk about it. I don’t like to talk about my work before. People hear it. 

Yvette Jackson: Well, I mean, yeah, I mean that, that project is in process for Deutsche Couture and it’s, I guess, the English title for its backspace, like, you know, on a keyboard, but can have like a, a double meaning, but with this, like I’m taking an extra time to, because I do want to, I.

Have meanings in German language. But then I’m also thinking about like the types of voices and like if and how class can be reflected through a language that is not my own. Mm-hmm. And the challenges of that and like how listeners perceive that. I mean, a lot of the times my, my projects, my radio operas are, are abstract any, a lot of the times, all the time.

My, my radio operas are abstract. Um, and. Uh, something you said in your previous kind of lead up to the question made me think about like, even, even the term radio opera, some people get upset by it, like, you know, why is she using the term. Opera. I don’t hear people singing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or, you know, are your pieces on radio?

I mean, some pieces have been played on radio, but the early pieces were not specifically or explicitly composed with radio in mind. Mm-hmm. Whereas this German radio opera that I’m working on now, um, I’m, you know, very aware about like the radio audience and I mean, and that, that’s what makes it exciting also.

’cause like. It’s kind of like my mante moment of composing something explicitly for radio. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I, that’s really exciting. Um, I’m like torn in two directions right now. Like I wanna, I. Ask you a bunch of sort of technical questions about how you do what you do. And I also wanna sort of get the background because you’ve hinted at certain experiences in your life in the past, like being a theater sound designer that I also want to dig into.

So maybe let’s go. With the biographical piece, and then we’ll come back to all my techier. 

Yvette Jackson: Sure.

Mack Hagood: Nuts in bolts questions. It all 

Yvette Jackson: started when my parents met. No. Um, let’s see. Well, I mean, I won’t go, I won’t go that far. Um, but you’re from la, right? Yeah, yeah. I’m from la. Um, and I grew up, um, uh, I, I guess I was lucky to grow up in a household.

With a piano and I had like a, it was my paternal grandfather’s guitar that really wasn’t strung properly, or, yeah, I mean, my mother didn’t know how to string it. I had, she had like a, I still have it, um, in my living room, but it’s like a box set on vinyl for like guitar lessons, which I’m not sure how one really learns guitar from a box set album, but I would love to hear that.

I do still have it. Um. But anyway, I, I, I didn’t learn through that method, but I mean, I guess I took lessons. On and off from an early age at the community school. So I was, I guess what I’m saying is I was su supported and exposed to music, both through different types of private lessons, through piano, you know, music fundamentals, and eventually switching to trumpet, which I had become aware of in elementary school.

So my public school was part of a magnet program. It was like a super phenomenal experience. Like I, I also have a 45 that we recorded. It was like a bunch of 9-year-old singing bar talk, if you can, if you wanna hear that. Um, but, but like, I mean, like how many nine year olds have this experience of like, you know, through a public school going into a recording studio and having a really good public school music program.

You know, having the privilege of also being supported with private lessons through the community school. And then at one point there was an older woman across the street who I had violin lessons with and you know, had instruments in the house. As I’m talking, I’m like, I think at one point my paternal grandparents gave me one of those like toys, us drum sets, which magically disappeared.

Um, uh, so, um, yeah, just having that support and I. I, I knew that composition was something I wanted to do and I always thought probably was thinking about it in terms of like film or tv, because I don’t know la that’s the industry there. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then at college, you know, studying composition and.

One year, I’m like, what are these electronic music classes? And went up to Princess Hall at the time was like transitioning from the Columbia, Princeton Electronic Music Center to the computer music center. Mm-hmm. And, you know, so, um, Brad Garten was starting out there and. There was something like really exciting about that space.

It was like engineers and musicians, but they’re, you’re encouraged to like explore and learn from trial and error, which was a lot different than in the formal music classes where, you know, you’re following all these rules and. Oh, you, you know, doubled the wrong note or, you know, something like that.

Which, I mean, I, I, I, I, I love theory, I love, I love rules, but like, there was also something just liberating about this experience and hearing one of Brad’s compositions where it’s like he’s, you could hear him washing dishes like I hadn’t heard. Things that were called music that were like this. And 

Mack Hagood: so who was the instructor?

Uh, 

Yvette Jackson: Brad Garten was, uh, one of the main people at the time, and I also took. I think it was like the last class where we were learning on reel to reel tape. So it was taught by Arthur Krieger. And so we’d get assignments with, you know, use these two oscillators and create a metallic sound that turns into a watery sound.

And you know, this is the rhythm. And it was like trial and error. I mean, maybe there was a lot more instruction there, but my whatever, 20-year-old, 19-year-old brain was only absorbing so much. But that experience with the real reveal. Still is important because I think about like this tactile experience of like actually splicing tape and like flipping things around and 

Mack Hagood: splicing it at an angle.

Yeah, it’s, you get the transition. Yeah. And like, you know, the grease 

Yvette Jackson: pencil and all of that. I. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah. Yeah. I, I just barely too got, got a little bit of that, you know, from working in radio, like a part-time job and, 

Yvette Jackson: yeah.

Mack Hagood: Um, so that, I mean, that was a really 

Yvette Jackson: great experience and, and it did come to serve me two other periods in my life, but also my first introduction to computer music.

I mean, we’re using like RTC mix, so. Programming like a line at a time, like play this sound for this duration at this amplitude like kind of approach to sound before I started working with other tools and I think maybe at that time, like I, I had digital performer, but I feel like at that point, I mean someone can fact check me, but I feel like that.

It might have been even MIDI only at that time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then they added the audio to it. Mm-hmm. And so, mm-hmm. Like just kind of looking back through this conversation, like these three different types of exposure to sound making that were a lot different than the rules and the type of. Ways of practicing that I had been trained on earlier.

And so I really relished in that. And then going from that college experience back to California, I eventually moved up to the San Francisco Bay area and got involved with like theater and radio drama there. There’s a group, Pachi Fool Run by Kevin Beam. Many Bera and you know, we did things at the radio station and that was a learning experience.

Like, you know, showing up to record live radio dramas and. Being like, where are the microphones? Well, that was my job. Oops. I forgot to like unscrew the mics and bring them from the rehearsal spot to the studio. But like sound effects being manipulated, live with the actors there and running sound for theater places like Magic Theater and like Aurora Theater and Berkeley, Oakland Public Theater.

Um, all of these experiences were great because again, it kind of gave me this bird’s eye view from being in the sound booth. And the very first piece I ran sound for. My good friend David Molina was the sound designer and it was like three hours of just like dense stacked sounds like with mini disc players and CD players.

And I think there might have been a live mic and I screwed up the first show ’cause like they literally, they, they grabbed me from the, I was working in the box office. They grabbed me there the first day, threw me in the booth ’cause I think it was. Previews that that night, and they didn’t have someone to run sound.

And so it was like learning, like learning how to swim by throwing a kid into the water. Yeah. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah. Yeah. And did you have a, like a, a physical cue book that you were paging through the script with? And we 

Yvette Jackson: had a book, but I was in the booth. So on one side was the lighting up, then the stage manager, and then I was on the other side.

So it’s pretty cramped in there. So yeah, the first couple of months you’d hear horses. Scalloping when there were no horses in the scene and stuff like that. But by the time I got this rhythm of it, I began to think of the soundboard as like this instrument. And like, you know, the stage manager is the conductor, the sound designer’s, the composer.

And that kind of expanded my desire to, I guess it like there’s this shift between like wanting to compose for theater, to wanting to compose theater. And I think just to back up once more, I think that experience at Columbia, I started to get that because like some of my earlier pieces, which like I have.

On a deck somewhere. Um, but like these earlier pieces, like I would use soundbites from 10 10 wins and pieces of instrumental music, like there are some Lionel Richie and Rashan Roland Kirk mm-hmm. Samples in the pieces. I mean, I think you might’ve, I can’t remember if I shared a piece, um, when we were at residual noise at Brown.

I don’t, I don’t make it publicly available, but I have shared it in a couple of like smaller talks to show this kind of earlier It is radio opera. I just wasn’t calling it that, you know? Yeah. 20 years before, or, 

Mack Hagood: I mean, you, I’m, I’m kind of getting chills just because I studied theater and did directing, did.

Sound design and there’s just nothing like that space of the Black Box theater and even just, you know, being the sound op and just, there’s something I found so meditative. I. About being in that dark, cool space and just hitting your cues at the right time and following along with, with what’s happening on stage and then just the collaboration and, and creativity, you know, of getting your friends to.

To, um, I mean, when, when Brush of Frame fame of mine was like, I, I was, uh, directing a play for a, a glass project and I had Brian Blade who was studying jazz at my university, like on drums there for a while, and he was like playing the walls of the black box theater awesome. And stuff. It was completely amazing, right?

It’s just like. Those little moments of like, sort of crossing paths with people and, and, and, and just creating something that’s ephemeral and then goes away. I don’t know. I, I, I could see why that was inspirational. For you and, and, and something that you wanted to retain in your work after having that experience?

Yvette Jackson: Yeah, I mean, I learned a lot from just, yeah, watching other designers, especially lighting designers. Um mm-hmm. And I’m hoping like, as I expand this idea of radio opera to include movement and lights, like Heather Baab was a lighting designer. I, I worked with a lot when I was getting started and like, I’m like, hey.

I have this idea coming up, would you wanna be a part of it? Because like, it’s kind of like if you think about like film or theater where sounds often is added at the last minute. Yeah. Like I don’t, I don’t wanna do that with the lighting or like any type of visuals. I want that to be part of the compositional process from the very beginning.

And so yeah, as radio opera becomes more collaborative for me reaching out to people earlier in that process. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah. So after that stint in the Bay Area, is that when you go down to San Diego? 

Yvette Jackson: Actually, uh, lived off the grid, well, not technically off the grid, kind of. I lived in the mountains at 8,000 feet in Colorado.

Um, oh. And that period was important because my listening shifted in different ways. And I think that’s kind of what primed me for the following interest in, in kind of soundscape studies because you know, especially those first few weeks or months of, I mean the town itself was a hundred people and then the outlying this kind of a land trust outside of it at.

More of a transient population and an out of it. 

Mack Hagood: How did you, you gotta explain, like what, how did you wind up, um, in Colorado? Well, okay, so 

Yvette Jackson: at, at the time I was a webcast and production director at Grace Cathedral for four years, and a lot of the time spending like 60 hours a week in the basement with black walls and the windows.

And then I’d go home to my apartment on Van Ness and Eddie, which was like Van Ness. It’s basically when the 1 0 1 goes through San Francisco. So it was like just hearing people scream and traffic accidents and just like, a lot of it was just like no windows and noise. Um, like a former partner was going to study with someone.

In Colorado and wanted someone to like watch her kids. And I’m like, Hey, I’ll do it. Um, well I didn’t say that immediately because I don’t, I don’t like to disappoint kids ever. So I wanted to make sure I would, it was actually something I was gonna commit to, but then I’m like, I’ll do it. And so we were out in the middle of very rural Colorado and it was just like.

One of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. It was also one of my, yeah, it was the only time I’ve lived, not near a coast, and I love water, so I mean, there, you know, there’s big rivers there as well. So, I mean, I did have like river access to water, so I, I went there for that summer and then I’m like, I’m moving here.

And everyone’s like, ha ha ha ha ha, that’s Yvette. And another wild thing she’s saying. And so yeah, I moved there for four years. I initially had this idea of like, I would compose and like have this home studio, but like actually having no business skills at all or understanding how to take care of a home in the winter.

So I let it flood twice from frozen pipes and I’m glad I didn’t put the studio in the basement because I would’ve like, yeah. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah. 

Yvette Jackson: Lost everything anyway. Um, 

Mack Hagood: so how did you support yourself for those four years? 

Yvette Jackson: Uh, I went into debt and debt and debt. I didn’t know how. Yeah. So it was a lesson learned about like business skills and, and musicians and fantasies about being a starving artist.

Um, when I first moved there, I joined the local fire department because I’m like, if I’m gonna live in this many. Trees in a dry area. I would like to know like how to protect myself and others in the land around. So I’ve met people through the volunteer fire department and one of those people happened to be the superintendent of the school in the next town.

So I. Taught K through 12 at the local public school. 

Mm. 

Yvette Jackson: Which is also like another way of just kind of expanding the way I was working with sound and music through that experience. And then at one point, I guess three years into my four years there, I came to California, a friend and I shared birthdays.

And so, you know, we had these kind of co birthday parties where I was meeting all of these other music people. And, uh, one of the gifts I got was like tuition for, uh, like the Send Mat summer program where they, you know, do Maxim, SP and all, and all of that. And, um, David was, was still around at that time.

And so it was through those interactions that I’m like, okay, finally I’m gonna apply to grad school, which is something I said I was gonna do 15 years ago when I had moved up to the Bay Area. And so someone, I don’t know who mentioned Anthony Davis, I think. Somehow I got, I think it was some kind of trumpet connection where I got pointed to Jeff Kaiser, who then, who was studying there at the time, who pointed me to Anthony Davis and we talked.

And um, yeah, that’s when I got into this other type of weird music making, because I think at Columbia there was weird music making. And then in San Francisco, the people I hung around with, like David Molina’s, you know, that was weird music making. And I was making music in Colorado. I wouldn’t call that as weird, but um.

Um, I guess, yeah, we, I mean we did some experimental things too. 

Mack Hagood: Did you learn, because you said you were sort of, that Colorado changed your experience of sound in some way or made you wanna think more about like soundscapes does sound. Travel differently at 8,000 feet. 

Yvette Jackson: It definitely travels, definitely in the winter.

Um, when it’s cold. I mean, like there it would be, I mean, some long stretches of like negative 20 degrees. And now I’m gonna say that ironic, or, I dunno if it’s ironic, but like when people are like, oh, but it’s, it’s a dry cold. Right? Right. Or they say it for heat, they usually say it for heat. It’s a dry heat.

I feel the same, like a dry cold, like I complained less in like negative. Degrees in Colorado than I did at like 50 degrees. San Francisco a hundred percent. Same with New Orleans. 

Mack Hagood: You go to New Orleans. I, I, I lived in Chicago for a decade. I’d go down to New Orleans during the winter, and it’s much warmer, but it’s so damp.

I would be freezing in New Orleans. 

Yvette Jackson: Yeah. Um, but I mean, I, I began to listen, I guess, to the. This is prior to me knowing anything about like r Murray Schaeffer and, and maybe I did come across his name in college, but it wasn’t something that was like in my mind or thinking about soundscapes or soundscape composition at that point.

So like, I guess I was coming up with my own language for things that. Again, maybe these seeds had been planted in college or from collaborators in the Bay Area. Mm-hmm. But I wasn’t as aware, so like listening to like, just kind of, I almost got like almost started shivering. Like the sound of like June bucks.

Like they make this gross hissing sound, chipmunks make a sound that I never knew. Well I guess I hadn’t really been around like chipmunks and, you know, squirrels and deer and bear. Um. All kinds of things. And so like it got to a point where like, you know, my first couple of weeks, like, I’m not gonna call it silence, but the shift in the soundscape made me very nervous, especially at night sleeping in this town that I went to without knowing anybody in the middle of like in thousand feet isolated.

Um, like worried about like. Bears coming on my steps and things like that, um, to by the end of that four years when I could hear the sounds of kind of people. Playing in the park and laughter coming through my windows, I’m like, oh, that’s so noisy. Um, but then when I got back to San Diego, LA Jolla area, like I found it, the noisiest place I had ever lived.

And that’s after like growing up in LA and going to school in New York and living in San Francisco, like, it was like, you know, you’ve got like, you know, the. Primary industry is military, so you have the jets flying over all the time. There’s like military and tourist helicopters, there’s like constant leaf blowers.

There’re um, you know, just all of these sounds that I became extremely sensitive to, which I assume probably. It was because of that juxtaposition temporarily of one experience to the other. And so I started becoming really intrigued by the invasion of kind of external sounds on one’s physiological and like mental health because like you can.

Close the door, but like these kind of lower frequencies are these trucks that are just idling. You’re still fueling those vibrations. Mm-hmm. Um, and so yeah, this, that kind of study, you can definitely hear in some of my pieces around like 2012. A lot of these field recordings are like, I’m recording in my domestic space, but I’m capturing all these sounds from the outside that become a part of it, but then also like incorporating these lower frequencies into my music.

As well. Hmm. Um, yeah, so I think, yeah, like, like I mentioned, darkness was a ear a, an important part of these early pieces, but darkness and low frequencies. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you do make powerful use of low frequencies this period of time. So you mentioned San Diego, this is when you do your PhD Yes. Uh, at UCSD.

And you don’t go into a composition program per se, right. 

Yvette Jackson: No, I mean, when I was, when I was looking at schools, I had looked at several places. I had looked at like theater sound design programs. I had looked at composition programs. And this program, which at the time was called CSEP, critical Studies and Experimental Practice, and by the time I started that program was being rebranded as integrative studies.

Mm. And so I think I joined during the second year. Of that program. And so, uh, the premise behind this program is that there were four kind of subcategories, systems, inquiry, critical musicology, ethnomusicology and creative practice. And you, you get exposed to all four during the first year, but then you focus in on two of those.

So I did, you know, my master’s and PhD there. And so. Getting exposure to kind of all of these different ways of thinking about sound. And 

Mack Hagood: what were your two focus areas? 

Yvette Jackson: I think for my master’s they were creative practice and ethnomusicology. And then for the PhD creative practice and systems inquiry.

But I mean, 

Mack Hagood: and isn’t, uh, king Britt a professor of computer music over there as well? 

Yvette Jackson: King Britt joined the faculty at UCSD the same year I started at Harvard. So we were able to kind of like connect. I guess kind of from the perspectives of, of starting at new institutions at the same time and right before the pandemic.

Yeah. And so I’ve been back to San Diego I think a couple of times and got to meet with King Britt and he invited me to perform on his electron stage at Big Ears. So Wow. Like I really admire what he’s doing, um, there and kind of wish I had overlapped as a student there. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah. Yeah. He seems pretty incredible.

Yvette Jackson: Yeah.

Mack Hagood: Well thanks for the little, uh, tour through your life. And it, and it is, it’s an interesting one. You definitely cut your own trail. Um, yeah, but, and 

Yvette Jackson: I, but I think that that goes back to what you were saying, like, my music has all of these different things. It does. Well, my life is at all these different things, like Yeah.

Yeah. And so how to, how to bring all these things together. ’cause when I feel like, when people discourage me and like, oh, you can’t do that, and that it’s like. What I hear is like, you can’t exist because I am these multiple things. 

Mack Hagood: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of bringing all these multiple things together, I, maybe we can talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of how you do that.

Like, so if we’re talking about, you know, a radio opera and it’s this collaborative enterprise, but you’re drawing on these modular synths and field recordings and, and. Different musicians and digital software, like where do these compositions live? Like did they, do they live in a da? Do they get written on paper?

Like where, where are they born and where do they live? 

Yvette Jackson: That’s a super great question. 

Mack Hagood: It was a good question, and Yvette gave a good answer too. And if you want to get into the nitty gritty of how she collaborates on these complex radio dramas. You’ll need to join the Patreon. You’ll also get that really interesting conversation about the Caron and Yvette’s.

What’s good? Just go to patreon.com/phantom Power. You’ll get all of our full length conversations, including this one.

The post Radio Opera Redefined: Immersive Sound, Improvisation, and Sonic Freedom w/ Yvette Janine Jackson appeared first on Phantom Power.

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