The Mouth

Whenever sleepless loner Harker needs reassurance, she plays old recordings of her childhood career as a treble soloist. One night in 1974, Harker hears a new voice on the recordings, whispering a mysterious message: “Free me from the Mouth.”

The Mouth is a multimedia performance text exploring the history of gender in liturgical music through a gothic premise. Inspired by the investigatory historical fiction of "Blackouts" by Justin Torres and the sonic experimentations of Wendy Carlos, The Mouth blends interview recordings, historical fiction, and gothic melodrama to ask “is it possible to free a voice from its recording?” and “is it possible to reunite a body with the voice it has lost?”

In 2026, this project received development support from Fresh Ground Pepper and Mercury Store. It also currently runs as an ongoing episodic telephonic performance series, produced in collaboration with fellow sonic artist Will Watt. The audio sample here is a recording of one of these telephonic performances (performed on the telephone, for an audience of one). You can read more about The Mouth here.