I’m delighted to share the songs and videos from Le Flux with you. For the last 3 years, I have put a lot of time and love into these tracks and look forward to telling the story behind the music. More blog posts coming soon (subscribe at UnoLady.com)
“Le Flux” is a 9-song video album created in a flow state in France. The songs are spellbinding, ambient arias, mostly lyricless. The film, taken across Europe on the same trip that spawned the album, follows Uno Lady through France, Switzerland, and Germany. All songs were composed at an artist residency in the small town of Orquevaux, France at Chateau Orquevaux. The footage is from the same trip and features scenes from Switzerland and Germany. The compositions, videos, and editing involved following flow.
The short film airs at 9am EDT 11/22/22
I picked this release date because it’s my lovely mother’s birthday. Happy birthday, mom. You’re the best and I love you so much. You made me so you indirectly made this album! Great job! This album is dedicated to you.
November 22 also is the 15-year anniversary of my first Uno Lady show!(RIP Pat’s in the Flats and the incomparably tough and supportive Pat Hanych). Time flies! Thanks for your support all these years.
Thanks to Chateau Orquevaux for providing me with the opportunity and a truly unique place to create. I am forever inspired by the atmosphere and the other artists who attended (Miss you!) Huge thanks to The Ellis Beauregard Foundation in Rockland, Maine for providing me a residency and the opportunity to spend last winter editing, mastered, and making the videos. Thank you all for your support.
I had the honor of composing music for Massillon Museum‘s virtual tour of “A Thrilling Act: The Art of Anthony Eterovich.” Thanks Karen Eterovich, John, and Alex Coon at Massillon Museum for inviting me support such a lovely project. It turned out amazing! Watch it here.
A Thrilling Act: The Art of Anthony Eterovich was on display at the Massillon Museum from June 12—September 26, 2021. I was honored to perform at the opening.
I loved writing songs specifically for the virtual exhibit. Inspiration for the songs were derived directly from experiencing Anthony Eterovich’s art. I love the vast variety of styles and the playful and vivid colors he uses. The paintings and sketches provided endless inspiration. It was wonderful to learn more about his life as an artists.
Thanks again.
In other news, I leave soon for the off-grid artist fellowship in Alaska. I’m developing a project that focuses on the forests. I will be in the wilderness, without phone and limited email. I am taking a break from outside work and reconnecting with nature. if you’d like to work together on a composition in the future, I’ll be available to write again mid-July. Take care!
The Well, based out of Cincinnati, offers programs that combine aspects of mindfulness, arts, social-emotional learning, play, movement, and poetry into practices for regular use within schools, hospitals, and communities. The Well’s Mindful Music Moments program delivers music and mindfulness daily to schools across the country.
Each week, entire schools listen to a single piece of music, repeated for 5 days, with creative, mindful prompts preceding each day. The Field Recording/New Music Project, supported by a grant from the Ohio Arts Council, hired 4 musicians to record sounds in their area and create new music with the sounds during the 2021/22 school year.
I am delighted to work on a piece that shares calm with students. The sounds of Lake Erie and surrounding wildlife were the theme and inspiration to this composition.
Notes about the recording
Erie Serenade samples sounds from the Lake Erie region. For this project, I recorded environmental acoustics at five different locations. Wave sounds were sampled from Magee Marsh and Edgewater Beach. Bird, bug, and frog songs were recorded from Old Woman Creek, Rocky River Reservation, and Columbia Station Reservation.
What amphibians, animals, birds, and insect calls can you identify? I can hear blue jays, chickadees, cicadas, crickets, and woodpeckers.
The percussion is made entirely of environmental field recordings; the melody is voice. All the vocals are my own. The natural percussion was clipped to fit 79 bpm and designed to be supportive of slow, steady breathing. Once the background beat was composed I meditated on what tone would fit the emotions and intentions of the song and started recording vocals. I wanted the piece to be uplifting, repetitive, and hypnotic, yet enough variation for engagement. There are many layers to the song that can serve as cues to breathe deeply. Please follow the pulse that best serves your breathing practice.
This project increased awareness of manmade sounds. Recording the natural environment is challenging because human-created cacophonies dominate the soundscape: running engines, ringing phones, passing planes, power and yard tools are much louder than wildlife. Even traffic lights hum. This project made me curious to hear the sounds of old-growth forests of the past.
I was asked, “What else do you want students to know, hear or think about when they hear this music?”
I hope this song helps students meditate in the present moment.
Listen to the layers. Breathe with the music. Let worries melt away and envision a calming happy space. Feel at peace. Today is an exciting new day. May it bring joy. Thanks for sharing this moment together.
By Shawn Mishak November 24, 2021, Cleveland Scene – “Christa Ebert, aka Uno Lady, last week released a seven-track album of her performing live impromptu hymns in four cathedrals around France and Switzerland uninvited nor permitted.
The album is a meditative prayer to humanity. Uno Lady’s Judy Garland-esque vibrato is as peaceful as a mother’s lullaby and as seductive as a siren’s song. The breaths taken in-between the swaths of human utterance allow the distant echoes to resonate through the cathedral and to come forth offering a serendipitous call and response leaving the listener’s hair standing on end.
“The spaces shaped the sound,” said Ebert. “The specific echo and excitement of each experience made the melody. I had never heard or sang these songs before. If I had scheduled a show, or gotten permission this would have been a completely different performance. These pieces would have never existed. This trip was the first time I focused all my attention on art. It was an exploratory experience. It was a quest to honor and follow my intuition. It was life-changing and shaped my decision to pursue my creative calling.”
Aside from this Chateau Orquvaux artist-in-residency, Ebert has been granted a Creative Workforce Fellow, is an Akron Soul Train fellow, and a Panza Foundation awardee. Along with several singles and cover songs, Ebert has recorded and produced six releases, including her mindfulness album and film series “GROUNDED.”
The “one-woman choir” harnesses her four-octave singing range voice, nature sounds, and electronic tools constructing “sonic worlds with dream-like vocal layers and looping ethereal tones.” full article here
I’m ecstatic to announce I have been selected for the artist residency program at Foundation House. I’m honored to be a part of the Foundation House’s creative, philanthropic community.
I’ll be spending a few weeks in Connecticut creating compositions and editing videos. The property is a century old great estate, with a grand manor house, old stables, and greenhouses.
Foundation House represents life at the crossroads; respecting the past, while inspiring the future. Foundation House opens its doors to artists and activists working on projects related to the mission of bettering environmental, community, and mental health. These creatives of all disciplines – painters, writers, sculptors, designers, visionary thinkers and doers – are offered an inspiring retreat, space and time to create (FoundationHousect.org).
I’ll keep you posted on what I’m working on and more about the residency as the details unfold. If you’d like to support my travel to the residency you can through venmo @TheUnoLady and paypal UnoLadyMusic@gmail.com
Thank you Foundation House. I am grateful for the opportunity.
I’m honored and ecstatic to announce I have been awarded the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Residency. I’ll be composing and creating art in Rockland, Maine in December 2021.
The Ellis-Beauregard Foundation recognizes that the arts are essential to an open, enlightened society. The residency program values innovation, experimentation and creative risk-taking in all genres, known and as yet to be discovered. They envision the residency as inclusive and diverse, prompting reflection and dialogue with other residents and the community, offering the gift of concentrated time and space in which to unveil new ideas and imagine new ways of working. More at www.Ellis-BeauregardFoundation.org
If you’d like to donate and help me get to the residency you can through venmo @TheUnoLady and paypal UnoLadyMusic@gmail.com I’ll keep you posted on what I’m working on and more about the residency as the details unfold. Thanks for your support.
