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Enterto Music Presents Lee Allen Shoemaker!
Water Birth:
Released late July 1999, this new solo album is recorded live in a two million-gallon underground cistern. The 45-second reverberation is uniquely sculpted by the eighty-eight pillars s
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Lee Ellen Shoemaker is The Tunnel Singer, a San Francisco-based performance artist and vocalist.
Singing in spaces with long natural reverberation has been Shoemaker's passion since childhood. Born in Kokomo, Indiana in 1936, Shoemaker's mother and father sang to her and taught her to harmonize with them. She enjoyed singing and playing the family piano, but resisted learning to read music or practice scales. She loved to improvise.
She remembers listening to classical music on the floor-model Philco radio, but especially enjoyed tuning in the unusual sounds on short-wave bands between stations. Her mother reports that as a toddler she sang with the drone of the vacuum cleaner whenever it ran.
Shoemaker entered the Studio Art program University of California at Davis graduating in 1985. She often describes her music as painting with sound.
Accepted for graduate studies at San Francisco State University Center for Experimental Interdisciplinary Art she studied Performance and Life Art.
She took extensive cinema and script writing courses prior to transferring to the Instructional Technology Department where she earned her masters degree in multimedia development.
She designed, published and maintains her website at www.tunnelsinger.com.
In 1992, Shoemaker met and improvised with a saxophone player in a Golden Gate Park tunnel (under JFK Drive near the Conservatory of Flowers). He convinced her to perform with him at Cafe International in San Francisco.
After a few cafe appearances together, she decided to try a solo performance with a Tibetan singing bowl. The audience was entranced. She continued performing at cafe open mics.
Requests for recordings encouraged her to produce her albums. Stephen Hill (Hearts of Space), referred her to an engineer with the willingness and equipment to record live performances in tunnels. Her debut album, Inner Runes (1995) is recorded in the tuned acoustics of San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts "Sound Column."
Her second album, Ravens in Moonlight (1997), includes didgeridoo and percussion. Peter Thelen of Expose Magazine describes Ravens In Moonlight as, "...somewhere between Dead Can Dance and Transmission." It is recorded live in a fog-muffled World War II artillery tunnel with ravens occasionally heard in the background.
Shoemaker traveled to Port Townsend, Washington to record her third and fourth albums. Water Birth (1999) is recorded live in the "Cistern Chapel," a vast underground concrete cistern. In its 45-seconds long reverberation her voice becomes a soundscape for an undersea voyage, evoking deep peace.
Ben Kettlewell reviews Water Birth in Alternate Music Press: "The compositions slowly evolve like a wordless mantra, suggesting an underwater environment of sea creatures, the slow undulation of underwater plants and inner space. Echoing voices cascade against each harmonic overtone to produce a giant modulating chord."
Returning to Port Townsend, she completed her latest album, Night Skies (2000). Recorded in a U-shaped World War I mortar magazine, the music evokes mythical images and an alchemical journey.
Omni-directional reverberations suspend earthly compasses. Songs inspired by Moon harp and constellations provide touchstones for following a star path toward inner tranquillity.
The Tunnel Singer has performed live coast to coast and been seen on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC television. Her independently produced and distributed music is played on radio worldwide and the Internet.
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