ARCHIVE

This week works from two artists who worked with New York City radio stations, Susan Stone from WBAI and Tony Schwartz from WNYC. First, "House with a View" by Stone. "House with a View" was created by American radio artist Susan Stone who has kindly contributed the piece, which is not widely available, to the Wave Farm Radio Art Archive. Stone had her start in radio at WBAI in NYC in 1979 producing a radio show called "Radio Schizophonia" with fellow radio artist Gregory Whitehead. She was involved for many years with Pacifica Radio KPFA-FM in Berkley California. Stone wrote to me about the process of creating House with a View, which was inspired by her short radio piece called Couch, which is also included in the Archive. You can actually hear clips of Couch and another of her shorts, Langue Etude, in the longer piece "House with a View" Stone writes, “I wanted to play with the sonic construct of moving through rooms, sounding out what might have transpired within each one. At the time the tech-play was setting up long acetate tape loops, threaded through standing audio tape decks, the tape crisscrossing my studio like a cats cradle...This created a choral outcome through the chance operations of phrasing —- how one voice became many with timing variations, one sentence at a time.” - Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner. Then tune in "Favorite Sounds;" "How We Remember;" and "Music in Marble Halls" from Schwartz (1962-1970), also introduced by Werner. For over 30 years Schwartz produced weekly radio programs about sound for the NYC public radio station, WNYC. Schwartz also created records for Smithsonian folkways that feature his distinct style, described as “part anthropological study, part hometown travelogue.” Schwartz developed a portable tape recording set-up in the 195O’s which enabled him to collect sounds outside the studio – on the streets and in his home. He edits and presents the pieces in a distinct way. Plus, Schwartz is very likable; a tenderness, humor, curiosity, and intimacy come through in his pieces. A poignant detail is that he was agoraphobic and rarely traveled outside his NYC neighborhood. His recordings create an expansive sonic world. The first of these three pieces by Schwartz is called "Favorite Sounds" and was recorded at the Jewish Guild for the Blind in New York City in 1963. The second features the voices of New York City teenagers, and is called "How We Remember" and is from 1970. And the third piece in this selection is about the pleasures of sound called "Music in Marble Halls," created in 1962. The first two pieces are from the Library of Congress Tony Schwartz collection: https://www.loc.gov/rr/record/schwartzrecordings.html. The third piece is from Schwartz’s Folkways album, "You're Stepping on My Shadow, Sound Stories of NYC." These are also introduced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner.