Natural Sound Workshop (founded 1971)...

The group's choral sounds are extraordinary. The group made a long procession into the dark theater emitting a gorgeous gurgling sound. Later they shifted to humming, singing, hissing and breathing sounds.  All the time the group was walking around so that the sounds were moving, creating spatial effects of which electronic composers, with their stationary loudspeakers can only dream.

Before long, over half the audience had joined the group on the floor, and it was almost like a discotheque--except that there wasn't an amplifier in the place, and the participants were making their own intoxicating music.

A fresh distinctive approach and important implications.

  -VILLAGE VOICE  (Tom Johnson)


"Several of Nurock's works are specifically scored for untrained, improvisatory participants.  Interestingly enough, many newspaper reviews of his presentations seem to revive the alarmed outcries of shocked innocence that greeted first performances of the now-recognized works of prokofiev, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Varese."           
                                                                                             
- Nicolas Slonimsky (Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians)

 

Kirk Nurock's Natural Sound Workshop makes sound entirely independent of instruments and amplification. Wednesday's program included what sounded like nearly every kind of concerted sound manifestation 20 people could make using nothing but their voices and bodies. Saturday's program included a piece by Mr. Nurock that consisted of a most beguiling assortment of sounds, executed with a crisp virtuosity.

Mr. Nurock and his associates have artistry and good sense. They believe in coordinated attacks, rhythm, sustained choral tone and even a dash of theater.  An important experimental occasion.  

- NEW YORK TIMES  (John Rockwell)





























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much more press from this period to be added soon...