Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg

The Boston Globe printed an article this January for their weekly Spiritual Life column, profiling the second Sunday Sacred Harp singing I help organize at Christ Church Unity in Brookline, MA.

The article, written by Rich Barlow, who attended January’s singing, explains the format of a Sacred Harp singing through the lens of the different faith backgrounds of members of our local singing community. The article follows how this music has brought us together for singing, fellowship, and in recognition of our common spirituality and religiosity.

I am quoted in the article as are two other Boston-area singers. You can read the article on the Boston Globe’s web site. It’s title: In song, different faiths find harmony

Come to Eyebeam Sept. 27, 6 PM for the opening of Interference. Eyebeam is located at 540 West 21st Street, NYC.

The show includes Subliminal History of New York State: Route of Progress (2007) an installation of community-shot video, original shape note songs and ephemera from this summer’s Route of Progress tour.

Jesse and Carrie will lead a shape note singing workshop (1-4 PM) and performance (5-6 PM) at Eyebeam on October 13

The exhibition will run through Nov. 10.

Join me and Carrie Dashow on Thursday January 11, 2007, for a performance of Under Island and a shape note singing school at Gigantic ArtSpace in New York. The singing school will be held from 5-7 PM and the performance begins at 7:30 PM.

Singing school participants will learn the basics of shape note singing and will learn original shape note songs that will be featured in the performance later that evening. Carrie Dashow will join the singing school to give an introduction to the Under Island story and the practice of subliminal history.

During the performance of Carrie’s Under Island story, the singing school class will join Carrie, Jesse, and the audience in singing several shape note songs, from the workshop.

I’m proud to announce the release of a new CD, Under Island, in partnership with Gigantic ArtSpace. The CD, a collaboration with Carrie Dashow, features eleven original shape note songs telling the subliminal history of Roosevelt Island.

The limited edition CD comes packaged in a paperboard case with a screenprinted cover, and includes an editioned, hand-printed tunebook containing scores to the songs so you can sing along.

You can listen to the Under Island CD at Gigantic ArtSpace at 59 Franklin Street in Manhattan, where the disc is for sale through January. On December 9, you can buy the CD at La Superette at Eyebeam in Chelsea.

For this year’s Conflux (a psychogeography festival co-produced by Glowlab and iKatun) I’ve organized The Tune our Lips to Sing Quartet, a quartet of street-walking shape note singers. The Quartet will conduct a singing tour of Brooklyn, beginning and ending at the McCaig-Welles Gallery. We will sing songs from the Sacred Harp on pages corresponding with the numbers that members of the quartet recognize as they walk.

The Tune our Lips to Sing Quartet is Greg Mulkern, treble; Allison Schofield, alto; Aldo Ceresa, tenor; and Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, bass.

The Quartet will conduct two tours, beginning at noon and 6 PM on September 14. Visit the Quartet’s web site for more information.

My MFA Thesis Show, Azariah: Whom Jehovah Helps is this Saturday.

The show will be a participatory shape note singing, and begins at 2 PM on March fourth (please be on time) at the Old Songs Community Art Center at 37 South Main Street in Voorheesville, NY (directions).

The singing follows the story of a young man from the Burnt-over district in nineteenth century Western New York who begins to experience visions of singing prophets in the wake of the Great Disappointment.

After the singing, there will be a pot-luck supper (please bring dishes that can be served cold), and from 7:30-10:00 PM is the monthly, Albany-area Sacred Harp singing.

Visit my blog for more information on Azariah.

Recordings of two shape note music compositions of mine, “North Adams” and “Undergone” will feature in a sound installation I’m creating to accompany The Informants, a work by Carrie Dashow in her collaborative solo show with Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua at Jessica Murray Projects in New York City, Pent-Up and Under Gone.

Working with Albany-area shape note singers, I’m creating recordings of the two tunes for five speakers, with each speaker playing back the voice of one singer. Each speaker is paired with an “informant” a character of sorts in the form of a video sculpture, created by Carrie. The work is juxtaposed with a giant lighthouse sculpture built by Matt and Jesse, and a video depicting the “eye” of the lighthouse by Carrie. Carrie also wrote the texts to “Undergone” and “North Adams.”

Pent-Up and Under Gone opens on May 27.

I just got back from a shape note singing from the Sacred Harp in Middletown, CT. It was a small singing, and we ended up paring things down to three parts. It has me thinking about shape note singing as a dying tradition, wondering whether it is in fact dying, and whether I’ll see the tradition grow or shrink, and how it will change over my lifetime. I don’t know what I’d do without shape note music.

I’ve been thinking through plans for my new shape note music blog. A first step in creating this new site is to figure out how to configure WordPress. I’m going to start duplicating my blogger posts in that blog and figure out how to separately display posts from different categories. Should be neat.

This Saturday and Sunday (while celebrating my 23^rd birthday which occurred on Friday, I attended the Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp Convention in Northampton. The WMSHC is one of the biggest and best conventions in the Northeast and this year’s convention was spectacular, with well over 300 singers in attendance and 128 leading about 200 songs.

Attending last year’s convention lead me to begin writing shape note music, and in the wake of this year’s convention, I’m hoping to finish work on my first set of compositions and begin arranging some performances. I’m now working on a couple of new pieces as well as porting all of my old compositions from Finale NotePad to Sibelius. As I make these changes, I will also update the shape note section of this site to include full-size scores as PDF and GIF files as well as MIDI files for each piece represented. I will also add a selection of new shape note pieces I composed since posting the current selection.

I’m planning on working with Pamela Slea and Laura Neuman to provide my shape note pieces with words, but I have plenty of pieces and I am eager to work with any interested writers. Please email me or fill out the form on the Contact page if you are interested.

I went to Middletown, Connecticut today where a group of 25-30 shape note singers brought together by Neely Bruce sang a selection of shape note songs, largely from the Sacred Harp songbook. A reporter and photographer from the Hartford Courant attended and reported on the event. The selection of songs was meant to illustrate the history of the tradition, from “Old Hundred,” the oldest song in the book, to recent works.

The group sang four pieces from the shape note sketches found on this site, including “Hampshire” and “Monday,” as examples of recent compositions in the tradition. Thanks to Neely Bruce for the opportunity, and to Anne Rhodes and Mark and Linda Pearlman Karlsberg for advice and support preparing for the sing.