Contralto Performance & Screening Information

"Contralto" may be screened as a traditional cinematic film with a pre-recorded musical soundtrack or as a performance with live musicians performing the score. Please get in touch to arrange a screening or performance. Rental of performance materials is available by request.

"Contralto" is a one-hour work for video, strings, and percussion that exists in between the spaces of experimental music and documentary. The piece features a cast of transgender women speaking, singing, and performing vocal exercises accompanied by a dense and varied musical score that includes a variety of conventional and "non-musical" approaches to sound-making.

"imaginative, resourceful, witty, defiant...haven't been so deeply moved by a new piece in ages." - Steve Smith, National Sawdust

”The whole experience was quite disorientating but very emotionally charged, leaving me with an unsettled feeling that is difficult to describe. During the performance, I was mesmerised by the humour and humanity of the film’s expressive subjects.” - Kate Bradley, Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century

"[The work] of a woman considering herself and women like her to a degree I have never seen on stage before." - Tamzin Elliott, San Francisco Classical Voice

Listen to a story from CBC Nova Scotia by Jayde Tynes or read the article here.

When a transgender man begins taking testosterone it causes his vocal cords to thicken and his voice deepens and drops into the so-called "masculine range." It is not widely known, however, that trans women's voices are unaffected by higher levels of estrogen in the body. Being a woman with a "male voice" creates a variety of difficult situations for trans women including prolonged and intensified dysphoria and higher risk of harassment and violence due to possibly exposing someone as trans unintentionally.

"Contralto" - defined in musical terms as "the lowest female singing voice" - uses the sound of trans women's voices to explore transfeminine identity from the inside and examines the intimate and peculiar relationship between gender and sound.

Contralto has been performed or screened at:
ALICE (Copenhagen)
Archipel Festival (Geneva)
Borealis Festival (Bergen)
BWA Gallery of Contemporary Art (Wroclaw)
Cornell Cinema (Ithaca)
Echo Park Film Center (Los Angeles)
Edition Festival (Stockholm)
Handwerker Gallery (Ithaca)
Inkonst (Malmö)
ISSUE Project Room (Brooklyn)
Louth Contemporary Music Festival (Ireland)
McGill University (Montreal)
MOCA Tucson (Tucson, AZ)
Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles)
OBEY Convention (Halifax, NS)
Plaza Theatre (Atlanta)
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR)
Project:BLANK (San Diego)
Radius Gallery (Santa Cruz)
Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester, UK)
send + receive Festival (Winnipeg)
La Sobilla (Verona)
Toronto International Film Festival Bell Lightbox Theatre (Toronto)

Made possible by support from:
Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County
Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant
New York Foundation for the Arts Shelley Pinz Professional Development Grant