The Assembly

Kythe Heller & Sounds Like Things // Firebird

Firebird is a full-length album of spoken voice and experimental music by Kythe Heller (text and voice) and duo Sounds Like Things: Andrew Stauffer (composition and percussion), and Nicholas Denton Protsack (composition and cello). The work, a realization of Heller’s Massachusetts Book Award-nominated poetry collection, Firebird (Arrowsmith Press), draws from a vast array of sonic resources that include spoken verse, vocalizations, cello, pitched and unpitched percussion, hammer dulcimer, bells, found objects (including boiling water, gardening gloves, fire, and snow), and field recordings.

Firebird corresponds to a secret intimacy of the ear—a space where meaning, sound, and word merge and touch one another, and by touching, put into play the whole system of the senses. Here, fire is both a destructive and a unifying force, altering people and landscapes. Runaways, the sick and the poor, a forest and a smoldering mattress—these stunning images burn themselves into the listener’s imagination. The female body becomes the site of trauma and myth, a place where “everything is burning,” has been and is always burning and being born. The album was created during multiple climate crises, including the record-breaking wildfire season in British Columbia as well as the recent torrential storms that have brought devastation to the land and displaced numerous families. In response to this, 50% of the proceeds from the album will be committed to the Canadian Red Cross.