Sarah Hennies
Sarah Hennies is a percussionist and composer. Her work is primarily concerned with
an immersive, psychoacoustic presentation of sound brought about by an
often grueling, endurance-based performance practice that Nathan Thomas
of Fluid Radio described as, "a highly sophisticated and refined
performance technique...that starts and ends with listening and
encourages a different way of listening from its audience.
Sarah Hennies is a percussionist and composer. Her work is primarily concerned with
an immersive, psychoacoustic presentation of sound brought about by an
often grueling, endurance-based performance practice that Nathan Thomas
of Fluid Radio described as, "a highly sophisticated and refined
performance technique...that starts and ends with listening and
encourages a different way of listening from its audience.
Transits: Volume 1
Big tip! American percussionist and composer Michael Ranta is a legendary figure who has worked with some of the most significant names of 20th century music but despite this and impressive body of work of his own, he has remained an obscure figure....
Important Records and is pleased to present Transits: Volume 1 the first in a series of releases by composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies documenting never before heard chamber works mostly composed in the 1970s while Ranta was living in Taiwan.
B…
Bodies of Water
Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer and percussionist based in upstate New York whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer & trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is primarily a composer of acoustic chamber music, but is also active in improvisation, film, and performance art. She is the recipient of a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Gran…
Motor Tapes
Closing the achingly long four years wait since her last full-length, the American composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies returns with “Motor Tapes”, her second release with New World Records. Comprising three astounding new pieces, made in collaboration with three acclaimed ensembles - ensemble 0, Talea Ensemble, and Ensemble Dedalus - that simultaneously encounter her moving into new uncharted territory, while remaining rooted in her singular practice, exploring musical, sociopolitical, and psyc…
First Fire • At Dawn (Tape)
100 copies on Yellow cassette shell. John kolodij - guitar, banjo, etc, anna rg - fiddle, sarah hennies - percussion
Mastered by Stephan MathieuArtwork by Myste FrenchLayout by Tiny Little Hammers
Extra Time
**Edition of 300. Limited Edition CD. Hand-numbered edition of 300. 6-page digipak with silver foil stamp, packed in hand-assembled glassine paper with hand-stamped seal. Printed in Indonesia** Working with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues, the American composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies often explores queer & trans identity, love, intimacy, psychoacoustics, and percussion. For this volume, she invited the San Fransisco-based percussionist and co-founder of queer …
Spectral Malsconcities
In modern experimental music, and especially among a number of musician-composers emerging in America during the Sixties, a fixation on process and awareness became a structural hallmark, exploring the gradual change of sonic materials, built environments, and the human body. Though much maligned as a term by its practitioners, figures like Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Philip Glass, and Terry Riley were among these 'minimal' composers; askew of them were electroacoustic explorers like Alvin Luci…
Casts
Originally released in November 2014 when we had just started out, we're incredibly pleased to reissue one of our very first releases and one that we truly believe deserves more attention. Composed, Performed, and Recorded by Sarah Hennies in Austin, TX & Ithaca, NY 2012-2014.
The Reinvention of Romance
“The Reinvention of Romance,” a new work for percussion and cello that examines the care and empathy that emerge when two lives share space. Over the course of 90 minutes, a series of repeating patterns creates a peculiar kind of harmony in which two musicians are rarely “playing together” but are nonetheless intimately bonded. The Knoxville-based duo Two-Way Street (Ashlee Booth and Adam Lion) commissioned Hennies to compose “a very long piece;” for this recording they step into its two intertw…
Reservoir 1
Black Truffle present Reservoir 1: Preservation, a gorgeous piece by American composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies. Sarah's work explores a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer and trans identity, love, intimacy, psychoacoustics, and percussion. The Reservoirs are a series of three one-hour pieces based on the relationship between the conscious and unconscious human mind. Jung and Freud described the unconscious mind as a reservoir, a repository for memori…
Notes on Other Music
Notes on Other Music is a 112 page A5 perfect bound book published on the occasion of the Fourth Edition Festival for Other Music in Stockholm. The book collects photographs, essays, interviews and conversations relating to the festival programme since its inception in 2016.The book features an extended piece on Eliane Radigue by Kate Molleson who visited the composer at her Paris apartment to discuss her instrumental music ahead of the Swedish premiere of Occam Ocean — her work for orchestra pe…
Sisters
Sarah Hennies new album! 40 minutes of incredible music for solo vibraphone, performed by Lenka Novosedlíková in a 700-year old church in Kyjatice, Slovakia. "We discovered the church in Kyjatice three years ago during our irregular wanderings across southern Slovakia. We were completely enchanted by this well hidden medieval building standing over the village, surrounded by sunny fields and dense forests. We asked ourselves how we could bring life again to the church, how we could fill it with …
Embedded Environments
**In Stock** Through a remarkable and singular body of work, over the course of the last decade, like storm beginning as whisper on the horizon, the composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies has slowly emerged as one of the definitive voices of her generation. Initially coming to focus as a member of Austin’s experimental music scene during the early 2000’s, before relocating to upstate New York, with a delicate, clattering grace, she has continuously offered vision, conceptual armature, crucial …
Gather & Release
Gather & Release is the result of years worth of composer Sarah Hennies' exploration of the vibraphone in synthesis with her experiences of identity, obsession, anxiety, tension, grief, and loss. Over the course of an hour, Hennies entangles highly focused percussion playing with field recordings, sine waves, signifiers from her personal & family history (including a 20+ year old recording of her grandfather reciting poetry), and bilateral stimulation, a tool for anxiety release and a major comp…