WGXC-90.7 FM
From the Radio Art Archive: "Swan" (2018) by Yvette Janine Jackson and "Embers" (1959) by Samuel Beckett
90.7-FM in NY's Upper Hudson Valley and wgxc.org/listen everywhere
http://www.wgxc.org/
Produced by Wave Farm Radio.
Swan is by American electroacoustic composer Yvette Janine Jackson. Jackson's radio opera work borrows from the immersive sound of the golden age of radio drama and is meant to be listened to in the dark to animate the theater of the mind. Yvette Janine Jackson is also interested in an African American aesthetic of electroacoustic music, influenced by Afro-futurism. Swan takes place in three scenes: “the cargo hold of a tall ship transporting Africans to the Americas; a disorienting journey that traverses time, and the arrival into the weightlessness of outer space” (Jackson dissertation, page 44-46). Swan was first broadcast on Wave Farm's WGXC on February 10, 2018 as part of an evening broadcast devoted to Jackson's radio opera work.
- Described by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner.
Embers was Beckett’s second BBC radio work and was written specifically for the actor Jack MacGowran, who had a minor role in Beckett’s first BBC radio commission, All That Fall. Embers is not an easy piece, and I have found it helpful to have a sketch of what's going on. The main protagonist Henry is the primary voice and the piece begins with a monologue addressed to his father, who has died. This is followed by a dialogue between Henry and his ex-wife Ada with intermittent scenes involving their daughter Addie. The piece ends with a second monologue by Henry. During his monologues Henry refers to story he is making up about two characters, Bolton and Holloway. Beckett wrote his BBC pieces very intentionally for radio, not for stage theater. He referred to these not as radio dramas but rather as “radio texts for voices, not bodies... [They depend] on the whole thing coming out of the dark.” (James Jesson) Not surprisingly Beckett was opposed to these radio texts being performed as staged theater. Embers features actors Jack MacGowran as Henry and Kathleen Michael as Ada.
- Described by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner.
The Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive is an online resource and broadcast series on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM, which is syndicated to stations across the country through The Radio Art Hour. It aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM/Shortwave broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or pirate transmission. The archive is a product of Wave Farm's Radio Artist Fellowship.
Radio artists explore broadcast radio space through a richly polyphonous mix of practices, including poetic resuscitations of conventional radio drama, documentary, interview and news formats; found and field sound compositions reframed by broadcast; performative inhabitations/embodiments of radio’s inherent qualities, such as entropy, anonymity and interference; playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers, and the potential feedback loops between hosts and layers of audience, from in-studio to listeners at home to callers-in; use of radio space to bridge widely dispersed voices (be they living or dead), subjects, environments and communities, or to migrate through them in ways that would not be possible in real time and space; electroacoustic compositions with sounds primarily derived from gathering, generating and remixing radiophonic sources. Note: Wave Farm continues to expand this definition of radio art through engagement with contemporary practices including those revealed by Wave Farm Artists-in-residence, and the Radio Art Fellowship program.

