Composer-vocalist Sarah Grace Graves seeks to recreate the direct connection between sensation and sound she enjoys as a performer in her notated music. In delving into sensation as a core musical parameter, she often collaborates closely with other vocalists: night vision (2019) for two voices, her collaboration with vocalist Niki Lada at IlSuono Contemporary Music Week, explores the dramatic potential of different levels of vocal stability, intensity, and turbulence; Both/And (2018) for two vocalists and two percussionists, created in collaboration with countertenor Andrew Joseph Leggett, examines the anonymity found in extremes of vocal register.
In her instrumental music Sarah Grace explores embodiment, resonance, and vocality. Her string quartet Landing (2018), written for Quatuor Tana for their residency at CNMAT, explores the unconscious, residual sounds shared by both strings and voices. Her work November Witch (2018), conceived in collaboration with cellist Eva Boesch at the Estalagem da Ponta do Sol Residency for Contemporary Music and Electronics, maps a progression of vocal resonance in both the movement of the vocalist’s body, and in the parallel sonic vocabulary of the cello.
As a vocalist, she has collaborated with Voice Science Works (Laurel Irene and David Harris) in the inaugural New Explorative Oratorio festival (2019), Angelbert Metoyer and Saul Williams in their performance piece Sisyphus Rising (2017), Kurt Stallmann in his ballet Vespertine Awakenings (2017), and with composers Theo Chandler, Alexandre David, Webster Gadbois, Erin Graham, Maija Hynninen, David Jones, Rebecca Larkin, Jasper Sussman, Matthew Toffoletto, Molly Turner, and Trevor Villwock.