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Issue 19 :: TUCSound: an issue from Tucson, Arizona

Contributor Bios & Liner Notes



Samuel Ace is the author of Normal Sex, Home in three days. Don’t wash., and Stealth, with Maurene Seaton. Most recently his work can be found in Aufgabe, Versal, Rhino, Volt, Mandorla, Black Clock, The Volta, and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics.

A print version of “I give you a duck” will appear this fall in the new issue of The Atlas Review.


Algae & Tentacles is the sound-making and noise-finding project of John Melillo and assorted collaborators. "Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied, / Go also to the nerve-wracked, go the enslaved-by-convention,/ Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors. Go as a great wave of cool water, / Bear my contempt of oppressors. ... bring confidence upon the algae and the tentacles of the soul." (E. Pound, "Commission"). [Editor’s note: While sometimes textsound.org co-editor Hannah Ensor plays with John Melillo as Algae & Tentacles, these tracks were not collaborations between the two.]

The pulsations of the air, once set in motion by the human voice, cease not to exist with the sounds to which they gave rise. Strong and audible as they may be in the immediate neighborhood of the speaker, and at the immediate moment of utterance, their quickly attenuated force soon becomes inaudible to human ears. The motions they have impressed on the particles of one portion of our atmosphere, are communicated to constantly increasing numbers, but the total quantity of motion measured in the same direction receives no addition. ... … Thus considered, what a strange chaos is this wide atmosphere we breathe! ... The air itself is one vast library, on whose pages are for ever written all that man has ever said or woman whispered. (Charles Babbage, "On the permanent impression of our words and actions on the globe we inhabit" (1837))


Samantha Bounkeua graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with a focus in contemporary violin performance. Samantha has performed in music festivals worldwide including the Britten-Pears Adelburgh, Tuscia Opera Festival, the Colorado Summer Music Festival and the Billingham International Folk Festival. She has appeared as a concerto soloist with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and was the grand prizewinner of the Santa Fe Pro Musica Competition in 2005. Samantha loves exploring cross-genre collaborations and was recently featured as the guest artist of Tucson’s Church of Beethoven, which combined classical performance with spoken word. She is currently an active member in many local music groups including Tango Rosano, Two-Door Hatchback, Antler Room, the Awkward Moments, and Tucson ChamberLab.


Wendy Burk is the author of two chapbooks, The Deer and The Place Names The Place Named, and the translator of Tedi López Mills’s While Light Is Built and Arcadia in Chacahua. She received a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship to translate Tedi López Mills’s Contracorriente [Against the Current].


Samuel Christopher is a human baby born in the western United States. Sometimes he initiates sound and movement projects in conjunction with the demands of his intuition. Samuel has many recordings that he self-released; you may find the most recent at http://aromanth.bandcamp.com


Michael Dauphinais is a Tucson-based musician who integrates improvisation, electronic sounds, and field recordings into rich sonic tapestries. An accomplished pianist, Michael has enjoyed a multi-faceted career including serving as a rehearsal pianist and vocal coach at opera companies across the US, including the cities of Tulsa, Sarasota, Princeton, Louisville, Albuquerque, Phoenix, and others. He has also devoted much of his energy toward new and experimental music, having performed in recent years with composers Stephan Moore and John King, choreographer Yanira Castro, Art.If.Act Dance Project, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as well as in several contemporary music symposia at The University of Arizona, where he currently serves as a vocal coach and instructor of solo and collaborative piano. www.michaeldauphinais.com

“Monsoon Mélange is a manipulation of various field recordings I’ve made during Tucson’s monsoon season over the past few years.” - MD


Kimi Eisele makes things with words, bodies, and paper cut-outs, though not always at the same time. She has not published in blah-di-blah or blow-dee-blow, though you can find her on the interwebs and in some books and journals. These days she’s trying to figure out how to duet with a Saguaro. She thinks textsound online editions about particular places are incredibly wonderful and important, especially in these days of “Oh, what did you say?” and “Where are you?” www.KimiEisele.com

"Hymenoptera, Tumamoc Hill" was written on Tumamoc Hill, an 860-acre patch of Sonoran Desert within Tucson city limits and home to the Desert Laboratory (est. 1903) for the study of desert vegetation. The soundtrack of hill walkers was recorded on its steep and winding paved road, which hundreds of Tucsonans walk daily for recreation and scenery.


TC Tolbert, a trans and genderqueer feminist, collaborator, dancer, and poet, is really just a human in love with humans doing human things. S/he’s written Gephyromania, I: Not He: Not I, spirare, and territories of folding, and co-edited Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, with Tim Trace Peterson. Faculty at OSU-Cascades, adjunct faculty at University of Arizona, and wilderness instructor for Outward Bound, s/he loves living a life of compositional improvisation on and off the page. www.tctolbert.com


Prabjit Virdee is a sound and installation artist from Tucson, Arizona. He performs both ensemble and solo works.


Joni Wallace is a poet and musician and earned her MFA at the University of Montana. She is the author of Red Shift (Kore Press, 2001) and Blinking Ephemeral Valentine (Levis Prize) (Four Way Books, 2011). The words used in Broadcast for Kitty with sparkle and fade; Remains; Mountains, Rivers (Japan, 1960); and Thicket with dress and lung are poems from her new manuscript, Kingdom Come Radio Show. Sometimes she is lucky enough to collaborate with Sam Bounkeua in cross-genre projects (here on textsound.org), other times in music (Antler Room).

On Sky, deer, grass (a triptych):

”I’m interested in the juxtaposition of sound (in its natural and altered, melodic and non-melodic forms) and language and the way that intersection disrupts and makes new meaning. The sounds used in this triptych are mine: collected, composed and/or electronically produced and intended to envelope the referents without destroying them, much in the way a web might (briefly) distill a fly.” - JW


Glenn Weyant is a sound sculptor living in the sonorous desert of Tucson, Arizona. More @ http://www.sonicanta.com

Work For July 2014 Monsoon Rain, Cricket, Kestrel 920 and Shortwave Radio Signal Manipulations ~ This is a multitracked sound work for 2014 Tucson monsoon field recordings, radio signals and instrument of original design. The sound of rain was captured via a microphone sealed inside an airtight container and placed beneath a passing storm. The shortwave radio was grounded in such a way that it permits signal alternation similar to a Theramin. The cricket recording was made by placing a microphone beneath a flower pot filled with eggplant plants. The Kestrel 920 is an instrument of original design built from found objects and amplified with a original piezo disc amplification devices. This work was scored to permit replication but with an emphasis on performer improvisation.


Joshua Marie Wilkinson was born and raised in Seattle. His books include Meadow Slasher, The Courier’s Archive & Hymnal, Swamp Isthmus, and Selenography (all from Black Ocean and Sidebrow Books). He lives in Tucson, where he edits a journal called The Volta and runs a small press called Letter Machine Editions.

These tanka were written in the lung of Biosphere2 in Oracle, Arizona.