Barry Spacks: A Private ReadingRecording engineer Ernie Tamminga tells the story behind the recording session.
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I had the pleasure and privilege of conducting the recording session for poet Barry Spacks' CD A Private Reading. Sitting alone with him in the recording studio, focusing only on the presence of his voice in my headset, I had an intimate experience of the gentle humor, the passionate, compassionate sensibility, and the deep and sometimes surprising insights that shine in his poems. I must admit to being relatively unsophisticated about poetry, and I don't usually read all that much of it. And especially I don't usually listen to it. Too many times in the past, when I've heard poets read their work, it was a grating and annoying experience, delivered in a whining, protracted monotone that sets my teeth on edge and makes me want to jump up and down yelling, "Shut up! Shut up!" The experience of the spoken poetry of Barry Spacks could not possibly be more different from that. Each poem, varying from about 45 seconds to two minutes in spoken length, is a miniature "performance" unto itself, with Barry's voice embodying and caressing the meaning and feeling of the words. In the recording, Barry briefly introduces each poem, so even an unsophisticate like me is invited, escorted, into each experience. The overall result is a very intimate "private reading" -- which is what we decided to name the project. Sometimes in a recording project, by the time you finish the process of transferring the original recordings into the computer and doing the editing and mastering, you get tired of hearing them. Not so in this case. Working with the sound files only got me even more intimately involved with the poems, and I eagerly looked forward to listening to the finished collection. Which I have now had the opportunity to do -- and it's an experience I enthusiastically invite you to share. |