At Hidden Door 2023, audiences were invited to explore The Environments; mysterious and otherworldly sets playing host to music, performances and visuals. One of these was Anthropocenic Garden – combining music, spoken word, opera, dance, video and electronics.

Today, the collaborators release a new album based on that performance. We spoke to Glasgow-based soprano Stephanie Lamprea to find out more.

It was during her training as an opera singer at the Manhattan School of Music when Stephanie Lamprea realised that western Classical opera was not what she wanted to perform. As she began to explore contemporary classical music, she discovered the avant-garde song cycle for solo female voice – Georges Aperghis’ 14 Récitations.

Through experimentation with the vocally challenging piece, Stephanie found her true voice.

In 2021, Stephanie moved from the United States to Glasgow to pursue a doctorate at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. There, she discovered a rich community of experimental artists and musicians, giving her a platform to collaborate with others in multiple artforms and recontextualise her operatic sound into a modern classic voice in the broader arts spectrum.

All of this has culminated in the release of her latest album, Don’t Add To Heartache – a collaboration with Glasgow-based composer Tom W. Green. The album is an immersive and inventive soundscape exploring the human relationship with the natural world.

A fascinating sonic experiment – an album that is equal parts urgent and indulgent

The Skinny

Tell us about your collaboration with Tom Green and the creative process that led to the album…

Tom and I met at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where we collaborated on a few projects together and have become fast friends. Don’t Add To Heartache was born out of a commission from Hidden Door Festival in 2023, where we co-created an insane, multidisciplinary concept exhibition called Anthropocenic Garden.

Anthropocenic Garden was a multi-artform work of various genres of music, free improvisation, spoken word, opera, dance, video, and several layers of electronics to create sonic ‘artificial’ environments. We wanted to create an environment that questioned various ways in which we humans think about or interact with nature in a time of climate crisis. We wanted to express both materialist and conservation approaches to nature, and to show the duality of joy and sorrow for nature that can both be felt and expressed.

Tom was able to record several nights of our live performances at Hidden Door, providing a wealth of musical material to work with when creating our album version of the show. I also added some tracks of electroacoustic soundscapes and field recordings with spoken word to add a narrative to the whole work.

We used a five-part poem by Juliana Spahr called Gentle Now, Don’t Add To Heartache, to tie everything together. Spahr’s poem narrates humanity’s relationship with nature, from admiration, to escapism, to pollution, to grief, and finally to indifference. It’s a powerful poem, and it pairs so nicely with a lot of the music we created at Hidden Door.

Does your album draw influences from other artists using the natural world as inspiration for their work?

Some influences for me in creating this work include Holly Herndon, Pamela Z, Anne-Liis Poll, and Björk. All these amazing vocalists and composers create music that plays with time, environment, electronics, and sense of space in ways that reveal cool and evocative vocalisations.

You have a history with Hidden Door, also appearing in 2022 alongside Post Coal Prom Queen in a creative collaboration entitled Music for First Contact. How did you became involved with Hidden Door and this collaboration?

On Twitter! Post Coal Prom Queen contacted me to collaborate with them on a new ‘space opera’. I was asked if I could somehow portray a character like the alien opera singer in The Fifth Element. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity, not only because PCPQ is an incredible band, but the concept of this project sounded right up my alley.

Our creative process from the start was joyful and very experimental – we improvised a lot of material and texts, and the songs were put together after lots of demos and recordings in a collage fashion. Performing the work at Hidden Door was absolutely thrilling!

Has all your recent focus been taken up with the album or have you had time for any live performance?

Most recently in February, I performed a concert of some avant-garde chamber music with my duo partner, flautist Richard Craig, at the Edinburgh College of Arts. I also have some concerts in Dublin and Glasgow scheduled with percussionist and theatre artist Darren Gallacher. And I’ve got an album release show for Don’t Add To Heartache on 9 May at Stereo Glasgow. I’m also finishing up my doctorate this year and handed in my thesis a couple of weeks ago. It’s been a busy few months!

What’s next?

I’m currently collaborating (as a vocalist and film actor) with contemporary Irish artist Jesse Jones, who works with film, sculpture, performance, and installation. We’re working on a new installation called Mirror Martyr Mirror Moon, which explores paintings, sacred Irish water wells, and the ideas of reflection and the feminist doppelgänger. The installation will be on display at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham May-September 2024.

I am also touring a couple of performance projects in late 2024 in Scotland and England – Kate Soper’s chamber philosophy opera Ipsa Dixit, and Arnold Schoenberg’s theatre work Pierrot Lunaire.

Don’t Add To Heartache was released on 1 March 2024 and is available on Bandcamp.