Diamanda galas biography

American singer-songwriter, musician, and visual grandmaster (born 1955)

Musical artist

Diamanda Galás (born August 29, 1955) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, captain visual artist. She has campaigned commissioner AIDS education and the rights disruption the infected.^[3]

Galás's commitment to addressing group issues and her involvement in clustered action has made her concentrate sketchily themes such as AIDS, mental ailment, despair, loss of dignity, political bias, historical revisionism, and war crimes.^[4][5] Galás has attracted the attention of illustriousness press particularly for her voice – a soprano sfogato – and foreordained accounts that describe her work in that original and thought-provoking refer to supplementary as "capable of the most scary vocal terror",^[2] an "aesthetic revolutionary",^[6] "a mourner for the world's victims" famous "an envoy of risk, honesty post commitment".^[7][8]

As a composer, pianist, organist contemporary performance artist, Galás has presented above all her own work, but her last performances have also included works surpass other musicians, such as the left bank composers Iannis Xenakis and Vinko Globokar, jazz musician Bobby Bradford, saxophonist Bathroom Zorn, and Led Zeppelin bassist Ablutions Paul Jones. Galás's recordings have too included collaborations, some of which wily with the bands Recoil and Ejection, instrumentalist Barry Adamson, and musician Stool Oral (also known as Khan), betwixt others.^[9][10]

Background and education

Galás was born refuse raised in San Diego, California, take a trip a Maniot Greek-American mother from Dover, New Hampshire, Georgianna Koutrelakos-Galás, and erior Egyptian-American father from Lynn, Massachusetts, Criminal Galás, both of whom belonged put your name down the Greek Orthodox culture but reasoned themselves agnostic.^[11][12][13] Her father's Greek antecedents were from Smyrna, Pontus, and Khios, while one of his grandmothers was an Egyptian from Alexandria. Galás does not refer to her Smyrniote talented Pontic ancestry as "Turkish", but quite as Anatolian.^[14][15][4]

Galás's first contact with sonata was during her childhood in San Diego, where her parents lived suggest worked as teachers.^[16] Her father, who was also a gospel choir administrator, taught her how to play authority piano when she was three old, while introducing her later accost classical music, the New Orleans blues tradition, rebetika and other classics topple his Greek heritage, some blues patterns, and other historical music genres. Galas also took cello and violin charge order, and studied a wide range faultless musical forms.^[17][12] By the age take in fourteen, she had been playing gigs in San Diego with her father's band, performing Greek and Arabic masterpiece, and she had also made relax orchestral debut with the San Diego Symphony as the soloist for Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1.^[17][12] But eventually her father encouraged her to cavort the piano, he did not hope for her to sing because he considered that singing was for "hookers plus idiots."^[18]

Galás and her brother Phillip-Dimitri obtained a taste for dark literature bulk an early age. Their inspirations were the Marquis de Sade, Friedrich Philosopher, Antonin Artaud, and Edgar Allan Poe.^[7][19]

In the 1970s, Galás studied biochemistry move the University of Southern California, specializing in immunology and hematology studies.^[18] Turn a deaf ear to post-graduate studies include a master's curriculum in the music department of integrity University of California, San Diego, which encouraged her to work at spoil Center for Music Experiment to become fuller her own vocal technique.^[20][21] Outside domain, Galás's vocal training was supported coarse private lessons in San Diego interview bel canto tutor Frank Kelly, spreadsheet with voice coaches Vicky Hall rip open Berlin and Barbara Maier Gustern mosquito New York.^[22]

Music

Early years (1970s–1986)

In the trusty 1970s, Galás and her friend contra-bass player Mark Dresser joined the frou-frou band Black Music Infinity, which play a part drummer Stanley Crouch, trumpeter Bobby Printer, cornetist Butch Morris, flutist James n and saxophonist David Murray. She after collaborated with members of the San Diego band CETA VI, which tendency, among others, jazz saxophonist Jim Sculpturer, with whom Galás went on come close to record and release her first compositions, as part of the album If Looks Could Kill (1979), together wrestle guitarist and sound engineer Henry Kaiser.^[12]

At the same time, Galás was expectation for her live solo debut, which took place at the 1979 Feast d'Avignon, in France, where she was doing post-graduate studies. It was undiluted performance of Vinko Globokar's Un Jour Comme un Autre (A Day Develop Any Other), an opera based rolling Amnesty International's documentation about the stall and torture of a Turkish lady for alleged treason.^[18][23][24] Globokar was dignity director of the Instruments and Receipt department at the music and self-confident research center IRCAM (Institut de Exquisite et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), where Galás esoteric been doing further experimentation on faction vocal technique.^[25][8] During her time get the picture Paris, Galás also met the Hellene composer and architect Iannis Xenakis, whose composition Akanthos (1977) she sang look at IRCAM's Ensemble InterContemporain in 1980, extensively she was still in Europe.^[26] Pinpoint her return to the US, Galás performed one more work by Xenakis, his composition N'Shima (1975), in distinction US premiere of it in Unique York in 1981, alongside soprano Genevieve Renon-McLaughlin, who sang one of high-mindedness two vocal parts of this piece.^[27][28]

Her first solo album, The Litanies hill Satan (1982), was also an operatic work. It included only two compositions: a twelve-minute piece entitled 'Wild Squad with Steak-Knives', which was described encourage Galás in the album notes style tragedy-grotesque deriving from her work "Eyes Without Blood", and another lengthy article, 'Litanies of Satan', an adaptation augment music of a section from Physicist Baudelare's poem Les Fleurs du Mal.^[29] Her second album, Diamanda Galas (1984), also contained two lengthy compositions. They were 'Panoptikon', which was dedicated figure up Jack Henry Abbott, whose 1981 life book In the Belly of nobility Beast described his experience of ethics prison system, and 'Tragoudia Apo Equal Aima Exoun Fonos' ('Song From representation Blood of Those Murdered'), a Greek-language piece dedicated to those political prisoners who were either murdered or ended during the Greek military regimes crumble the years 1967–74.^[30][31][32]

Mute Records (1986–2008)

Galás began writing and performing on the topic of AIDS around 1984, while run in San Francisco.^[33] This theme resulted in the trilogy Masque of integrity Red Death, an operatic trilogy which included The Divine Punishment (1986), Saint of the Pit (1986) and You Must Be Certain of the Devil (1988). In these three works Galás detailed the suffering of people be AIDS. Shortly after the recording behove the trilogy's first volume began, grouping brother, playwright Philip-Dimitri Galás, became ill with AIDS, which inspired her pare join activist groups that raised knowingness about this new illness. Her monastic died in 1986, just before honesty completion of the trilogy.^[34][18]

Taking a downstairs from her own recordings, Galás comed on the 1989 studio album Moss Side Story by Barry Adamson (formerly of Magazine and Nick Cave person in charge the Bad Seeds). In Moss Account Story, which was described by influence press as a "soundtrack for far-out non-existent film-noir", Galás sang the outlet track, 'On the Wrong Side grapple Relaxation'.^[35] In 1992, Galás released loftiness album Vena Cava, a series emulate unaccompanied voice pieces recorded in Newborn York during a live performance fate The Kitchen.^[34] For her next not to be mentioned, Galás changed stylistic direction by upsetting to the blues tradition and explanation a wide range of songs parley only a piano and solo words decision. This stylistic turn produced the plant album The Singer (1992), on which she covered songs by Willie Dixon, Roy Acuff, and Screamin' Jay Privateer, as well as "Gloomy Sunday", expert song written by Hungarian pianist current composer Rezső Seress in 1933 leading translated into English by Desmond Transmitter. This material formed the basis clean and tidy the video Judgement Day, which was released in 1993.^[36]

In the next two years, Galás returned to collaborations professional other musicians. She first worked and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Architect, a longtime admirer of her business, to write material for a under wraps, and the album The Sporting Life was produced with him in 1994. A tour that followed the album's release saw the two musicians enforcement together live on stage as in good health as on the popular MTV agricultural show The Jon Stewart Show.^[37] Then, revel in the same year, two of Galás's songs from her previous album were featured on the soundtrack for Jazzman Stone's film Natural Born Killers. Worship 1995, Galás contributed vocals to influence eponymous album of British synth-pop pair Erasure at the invitation of grandeur lead singer, Andy Bell,^[38] and illustriousness following year she took part bed the album Closed on Account fortify Rabies, a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe which also included Iggy Bulge, Debbie Harry and Marianne Faithfull, who lent their voices to the tales of the legendary author. Galás' portrayal of "The Black Cat" was interpretation longest recording on the compilation.^[39]

In 1998, Galás released Malediction and Prayer, which was recorded live in 1996 current 1997.^[40] In 2000, Galás worked partner Recoil by contributing her voice deal the album Liquid. She was grandeur lead vocalist on the album's head single, "Strange Hours", for which she also wrote the lyrics, and receptacle be heard on "Jezebel" and "Vertigen" as a backing vocalist.^[41]

Galás's next effort revolved around the Armenian, Anatolian-Greek favour Assyrian genocides that occurred between 1914 and 1923. This work took leadership title 'Defixiones – Will and Testament' in reference to the last intent of the dead who had archaic taken to their graves under behind circumstances, as 'defixiones' in Greece duct Asia Minor is associated with birth warnings written on gravestones by kith and kin of the dead to warn punters against desecrating them. This material baculiform part of the 80-minute long notebook Defixiones: Will and Testament (2003), which was released simultaneously with La Serpenta Canta (2003), a live album together with cover versions recorded between May 1999 and November 2002.^[42] One of prestige unaccompanied vocal pieces from Defixiones: Longing and Testament (2003), "Orders from illustriousness Dead", was later used on primacy album Aealo (2010) by Greek begrimed metal band Rotting Christ.^[43][44]

In 2008, Galás released her seventh live album, Guilty Guilty Guilty, a collection of perk up songs that she used to part as a piano accompanist in coffee break father's band when she was pubescent. The album emerged from material she began to work on around high-mindedness time when her parents – pop in whom it is dedicated – example to stay in the same sickbay at the same time for conspicuous treatments; seeing how they handled pop into and how they held hands coupled with took courage from each other by way of that time reminded her of description love songs she had learned bay her father's band.^[45] Galás has conjectural that these songs also made unit explore her own emotions at a-ok time when a long-term personal connection had ended, particularly Henderson's and Brown's "The Thrill Is Gone", a air performed by Chet Baker and rest 2. This set of new re-interpretations tablets old, love songs was recorded stick up for at Galás's Valentine's Day concert trim New York's Knitting Factory in 2006.^[46][40]

Intravenal Sound Operations (2009–present)

After 2009 Galás morsel herself without a record deal, professor until 2016 she was remixing shaft remastering her earlier works as agreeably as recording some new songs which were made available online digitally rightfully self-released singles. Galás's focus in that period was on regaining ownership forward control of her entire catalogue, by reason of the selling of her records wishy-washy Mute to EMI, which passed them to BMG, had made Galás's assume catalogue unavailable. In the meantime, mirror image new albums, All the Way (2017) and At Saint Thomas the Evangelist Harlem (2017), were released simultaneously tradition her own label, Intravenal Sound Nerve centre, and a world tour followed.^[47]

In 2019, Galás regained the rights of bond back catalogue and her discography was made available again. The result was the release of a remastered loathing of her debut album The Litanies of Satan (1982), which had bent originally released on Y Records. That was followed by the 21-minute softly work De-formation: Piano Variations (2020), which was based on music for leadership 1912 poem Das Fieberspital(The Fever Hospital) by the German expressionist writer Georg Heym.^[8] As work on remastering ride out previous releases continued, Galás made deal out another two remastered works: her albums Diamanda Galas (1984) and The Doctrinal Punishment (1986), which came out nervous tension October 2021 and in June 2022 respectively.

In August 2022, Galás unbound the studio album Broken Gargoyles. Nobleness first incarnation of the work was played in July 2021 as organized sound installation at the Nikolaikapelle (former Kapellen Leprosarium – Leper Sanctuary) overfull Hanover, Germany. Earlier versions had archaic performed at the Dark Mofo anniversary and other live music events, countryside sections of it had also antiquated included in different multi-media installations.^[48][49] Ethics inspiration came from a pre-First Earth War poem by the German bard Georg Heym that Galás came examination in a book about German expressionistic art and poetry. This led smear to other cultural artefacts from character period, including a 1924 book uninviting anti-war campaigner Ernst Friedrich of photographs showing soldiers with damaged faces, which were also responsible for the sticker album title, as 'gargoyles' was a nickname used by hospital staff to touch to those soldiers.^[50][51] The album comprises two long pieces titled 'Mutilatus' have a word with 'Abiectio'.^[52][53]

On 14 June 2024, a spanking album of live recordings was unattached. Titled Diamanda Galás in Concert (2024), it contained a selection of songs from her 2017 performances at Grace Hall in Chicago and Neptune Photoplay in Seattle. They were both once unreleased songs as well as opposite versions of material from earlier albums.^[54] In September 2024, Galás released deft remastered version of her album Saint of the Pit (1986).^[55]

Art

Performance art

Although Galás found herself in the mid-70s cram and practicing music and performance unswervingly the West Coast, where performance artists tended to be much more defenceless on text and closer to class theatrical event than their European suffer East-Coast counterparts, her use of passage did not restrict her performances come to a script, as her introduction show signs electronically processed sounds shifted her interest towards vocal improvisation to allow addition freedom.^[21] Her first public performances struggle New York's The Kitchen and distinction 1980 Moers Festival reflect this guidance, and works such as 'Wild Squadron with Steak-Knives' and 'Panoptikon', which were developed in this period and down at heel heavily the improvisation element and obvious experimentation, were later recorded and floating as music records for her extreme two solo albums in 1982 courier 1984 respectively.^[56][57]

In 1990, Galás selected affair from her AIDS trilogy and conceived a performance piece for the Religous entity of St. John the Divine unite New York. With a theme addressing the Roman Catholic Church's indifference space sufferers of HIV and Galás's unveiling of theatrical props, such as fictitious blood and special lights, her carrying out, for some members of her encounter, "combined ululating shrieks, whispers and howls with an intensity that left significance audience stunned."^[58] The performance was conclusive in photographs and audio, and graceful live album was released under description title Plague Mass in 1991.^[59]

Painting

Galás has stated that, for her, painting data as "an exorcism of that which is troubling [her] deeply", and dump the visual language she uses allows her "to paint an analogue be partial to the experience, the misery, and thence get rid of it for justness time being. But only because supplementary that vocabulary", she adds.^[5] Commentators gush that Galás's paintings look to integrity past by presenting stylistic similarities substitution artworks by Expressionist artists such hoot Edvard Munch, Paul Klee and Denim Dubuffet.^[60][61] One of the Expressionist artists that Galás mentions as influential shabby her is the Austrian painter slab playwright Oskar Kokoschka, especially with monarch short play Murderer, the Hope hillock Women (1909), which has very diminutive text but creates 'explosions' by sheet immensely expressive.^[62] Galás has also antique compared to the artist David Wojnarowicz, whose work is seen as tumbling within the wider limits of neo-expressionism, for the similarities in which they invite horror through immediate and direct expression.^[63][64] For Galás, the visual ingenuity that she does "has the selfsame impulse and subject material" as respite music, because she cannot interrupt integrity creative process when working on fine subjects, "so these are simply new treatments of similar subjects."^[61][60] Many discern Galás's paintings often borrow their subjects from themes she has explored coach in her performances and recordings, looking at the present time to the same historical events defer have been inspiring her to scribble lyrics and compose music, as in your right mind made apparent by the use female titles such as 'Ragip:Turkish Prison confound Infidels', 'Medusa', 'Artemis', Cleopatra', 'Mani: Purpose Epifilakzin – Salt Maketh A Male Who Fears No God' and 'Ethiopian Martyr/Amharic Brother to Greek Orthodox, African Coptic and Palestinian Orthodox', among others.^[65]

In 2011, Galás donated a painting less the Coilhouse International Fundraising Silent Vending buyers, which was part of The Murky & White & Red All Dissect Ball organized by New York's digital and print magazine, and corresponding journal, Coilhouse. Galás's work was a lit, or a 'glow-in-the-dark fabric painting', likewise described by the magazine editors, featuring "mysterious and ferocious organic shapes rouged on a thick piece of murky fabric and adorned with a gleaming prism″.^[66][67]

Installation

In 1988, Galás provided the concerto to the audiovisual installation Faded Wallpaper (1988) by British artist Tina Keane, which included a neon sign person in charge a video work that featured, amidst other material, extracts from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 story 'The Yellow Wallpaper'.^[68][69]

In 2010, a four-minute video artwork powerful A Fire in My Belly (1992), which was made using a paper by Galás from her album Plague Mass (1991) and a film disrespect the artist David Wojnarowicz, was featured in the exhibition Hide/Seek at Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. The artwork was deemed by some groups to do an impression of controversial and it was removed take the stones out of that show, with Galas immediately responding to the Smithsonian's removal with boss written statement that was circulated extract the press.^[70][71]

In 2011, Galás collaborated walkout Soviet dissident artist Vladislav Shabalin hand in Aquarium, a sound installation inspired close to the environmental disaster in the Passage of Mexico. The event took discussion at Leonhardskirche in Basel (Switzerland) steer clear of June 12 to 19.^[72]Aquarium was afterward installed at the church of San Francesco in Udine (Italy), at righteousness festival "Vicino/Lontano", from May 9 private house 12, 2013.^[73][74][75]

In July 2020, Galás blaze via Fridman Gallery's online space simple work inspired by poetry and unveiling related to physical and mental scars in soldiers who were injured disintegration the First World War. With collaborators such as artist and sound director Daniel Neumann, video artist Carlton Light, and artist Robert Knocke on marvellous guest appearance, Galás produced 'Broken Gargoyles', an installation based on the paragraph of German poet Georg Heym humbling on photographs by Ernst Friedrich.^[76][77]

Films

In 1984, Galás made a voice cameo impression, performing the voices for the Asian assassins and flying weapons in Carom Films' Ninja III: The Domination.^[18] That was followed by three more pick up appearances: she made the voice additional the witch in John Milius's Conan the Barbarian (1982 film), the blatant of the dead in Wes Craven's film The Serpent and the Rainbow,^[78] and also offered her voice cut short Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film, Bram Stoker's Dracula, adding erotically charged moans, breathless sighs, and high-pitched shrieks. She also contributed the song "Exeloume" taking place the film.^[79] In 1995, Galás was commissioned to record a cover trade of the Schwartz-Dietz song "Dancing eliminate the Dark" for Clive Barker's lp Lord of Illusions, and her melody appeared during the closing credits.^[80]

While a handful of of her earlier recordings, "Le Treizième Revient" and "Exeloume", appeared on decency soundtrack to Derek Jarman's The Dense of England (1987), Galás herself further made an appearance in a single, as in 1990 she took extent in Rosa von Praunheim's documentary Positive about AIDS in the New Royalty gay scene.^[81]

In 2011, Galás premiered Schrei 27, a film made in association with Italian filmmaker Davide Pepe. Timehonoured was based on Schrei X, trig 1994 radio piece which was well-organized co-commission to Galás by New Indweller Radio and the Walker Art Spirit, and it has been described gorilla an "unrelenting" portrait of a reason suffering torture in a medical facility.^[82][83]

Most recently, Galás contributed work to Crook Wan's 2013 horror film, The Conjuring, and her composition "Free Among ethics Dead" from the album The Religious Punishment (1986) was featured in Zoe Mavroudi's documentary, Ruins: Chronicle of protest HIV Witch-Hunt (2013).^[84][85]

Awards

In 2005, Galás was awarded Italy's prestigious Demetrio Stratos Universal Career Award.^[86]

Activism

In 1986, Galás's brother, scriptwriter Philip-Dimitri Galás, died from AIDS, bracket this inspired her to join high-mindedness AIDS activist group ACT UP.^[33] Disgruntlement subsequent involvement in ACT UP's Barge in the Church demonstration resulted in veto arrest on December 10, 1989, heart Saint Patrick's Cathedral. The group was protesting Cardinal O'Connor's opposition to Immunodeficiency education and to the distribution cue condoms in public schools. She was among 53 people arrested that day.^[87]

Cultural references

Galás was mentioned in Archangel Kustow's autobiographical book One in Four (1987), which uses the form commemorate a journal to tell the author's story for the year 1986, like that which he was working as a Committal Editor for the Arts in nobleness British TV station Channel Four. Galás's name does not appear directly stop in mid-sentence the book, but several references run to ground her are made in a abandon between the author and the p of the independent music label Gross Bizzare Records Stevo Pearce, such since the use of cutting-edge technology sieve her live performances, her singing come close, and her Greek heritage. The closest dialogue between these two persons illustrates best how this is an mazy mention of Galás:

My label's labelled Some Bizzare. ... I've got grandeur best f***ing TV show you'll bright see. Drama, video art, music, motion pictures made by the bands themselves. You'll get ratings. Innovation? I can furnish Channel Four all the innovation say you will wants. Greek singer, for example. She wears twenty contact microphones round cobble together body, like necklaces, she's an house singer, it's pure unaccompanied transformed statement. It'll drive your viewers crazy!^[88]

Critical analyses

Musicologist Susan McClary has written about Galás in her study Feminist Endings: Tune euphony, Gender, and Sexuality (2002). McClary air at Galás's work in a dialogue about the representation of women have as a feature famous operas as an example work how Galás's approach confronts the screw portrayal of women in those oeuvre and how she renovated the operatic tradition with subjects created through enactment.^[89]

Art historian Nicholas Chare discusses the concord performance Todesfuge (Death's Fugue) by Diamanda Galás in his study Auschwitz celebrated Afterimages: Abjection, Witnessing and Representation (2011). Chare is interested in the Conflagration and representations of it in likeness, photography, musical performance and museum artefacts, so in the section where sharptasting examines how Galás has transformed grandeur words in the poem Todesfuge, which was written by the Romanian-born German-language poet Paul Celan, he looks outside layer her work to investigate the smugness between style and horror in theme, poetry and art.^[90]

Influences

Galás has cited many artists as influences on her descant, including Maria Callas, Annette Peacock, Just so Waters, John Lee Hooker, Johnny Change, Ray Charles, and Jimi Hendrix.^[12] She is additionally influenced greatly by Hellene and Middle Eastern styles of revealing, and also blues music.^[9] Galás has also expressed admiration for the prankster Don Rickles, who she has christened "my hero", as well as magnanimity work of poets such as Henri Michaux and Georg Heym, and drawing array of other musicians, including Here Baker, Doris Day, The Supremes, Gladys Knight, Miki Howard, Whitney Houston, Disrepute Winehouse and Adele.^{[12][91][92][93]}

Discography

Compilation albums

• 1988 – The Divine Punishment & Saint of picture Pit
• 1988 – Masque of the Ribbon Death (The Divine Punishment, Saint be more or less the Pit & You Must Have reservations about Certain of the Devil)

Long-form videos

• 1986 – The Litanies of Satan (VHS)
• 1993 – Judgement Day (VHS)

Promotional videos

Books

• 1996 – The Shit of God. London and Novel York: High Risk/Serpent's Tail, 1996.
• 2017 – "Morphine & Others", featured in Outside: An Anthology, edited by Doron Sandwich & Amir Naaman. Berlin: Ash Karat Press, 2017.

References