Quaking Aspen is the debut solo album of Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea. An architect of new sounds and expressions as a performer specializing in contemporary-classical repertoire, Lamprea uses her coloratura voice as a mechanism of avant-garde performance art, creating “maniacal shifts of vocal production and character… like an icepick through the skull” (Jason Eckardt).

"This record sets poetry and sounds of the natural world to unaccompanied voice, with words written by female poets from the 19th through 21st centuries. Placing text at the forefront, each poem is first spoken, and then sung to mesmerizing and distinctive musical interpretations. The record begins with Jason Eckardt’s Populus tremuloides: Quaking Aspen, a wordless vocal soundscape using an array of timbres and extended techniques to represent the living form and motion of the Catskill Mountains’ quaking aspen. Moving through music of Wang Lu, Kurt Rohde, James May, George Gianopoulos, and Hannah Selin, through the words of Lucy Corin, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Donna Masini, and Edith Wharton, the listener is met with vibrant and vulnerable interpretations of text, soaring vocalises, and mercurial acrobatics abound.

Jason Eckardt’s Populus tremuloides: "Quaking Aspen" is a wordless vocal soundscape using an array of timbres and extended techniques to represent the living form and motion of the Catskill Mountains’ quaking aspen.

Kurt Rohde’s Water Lilies I is a short work for solo voice setting Donna Masini’s poem of the same name from her collection 4:30 Movie. Masini’s Water Lily poems are assembled floating across the printed page, like flowers resting on a fluid surface. Rohde uses amplified voice, electronic filters, and three distinct head positions to mirror Masini’s poetic form, gently swaying and inwardly accumulating.

Bathing, composed by Wang Lu, is based on a short story from American writer Lucy Corin’s collection One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses. Inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, Wang emphasizes an obsession with hygiene and wiping surfaces, while having the vocalist murmur, speak to the audience, shout, sing beautiful lyrical lines, vocalise high coloratura passages, and at times hysterically scream.

Mid-Day, composed by Hannah Selin, is a work for soprano and electronics which sets the poem of the same name by American modernist H. D. Selin uses electronic loops, sustained notes, and grand coloratura gestures to focus on nested timelines and regeneration of life out of older materials, just as the poetry describes nature as a series of cycles of death and rebirth.

George N. Gianopoulos’ An Autumn Sunset is a two-song cycle based on the poem by American writer Edith Wharton. Wharton uses vivid, colorful, and at times exaggerated language to depict the sun setting over an autumnal landscape. Gianopoulos reproduces the intensity of Wharton’s poem, combining coloratura passages and atonal experimentation.

Flowers for Eurydice, composed by James May, is a short, dramatic work for unaccompanied soprano. The text comes from the final segment of H.D.’s Eurydice poem, which tells the story of Orpheus’s failure to lead Eurydice from the underworld from Eurydice’s perspective. Over the course of the poem, she goes from mourning the life she could have had to asserting her own agency in determining her life; this piece captures her last defiant statements through soaring lyricism and poignant dynamics.

Works by Eckardt, Wang, Gianopoulos, Rohde, and Selin were all written especially for Stephanie. Bathing by Wang Lu was graciously commissioned by the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. For this record, William Bond provides spoken word."

– Stephanie Lamprea