X-TRA Winter Launch:
The Reader’s Chorus in Conversation
Presented on January 23, 2020 at JOAN

This event featured the debut screening of a documentary about The Reader’s Chorus, followed by a conversation with Chorus members Tuni Chatterji, Sara Roberts, and Tim Tsang moderated by Shana Lutker. Below, you will find the video documentation of the introduction and conversation. The finale is a group reading of the Reader’s Chorus script written by artist and Chorus member Haruko Tanaka, “Ghosts See Ghosts,” published in the X-TRA winter issue.

Haruko died unexpectedly before the publication of the issue in October 2019. Her piece is a tribute to Jordan Biren, who passed away in 2018. We are deeply saddened to have lost both these artists. In honor of Haruko and Jordan, we wanted to bring together Chorus members, and invite all to learn more about The Reader’s Chorus and their practice.

The Reader’s Chorus documentary was shot by Emily Lacy and Cascade Wilhelm, and edited by Emily Lacy, and co-edited by Haruko Tanaka and Tuni Chatterji. 

Special thanks to our generous hosts, JOAN.

About The Reader’s Chorus

Founded in 2014 by artists Sara Roberts and Jordan Biren in Los Angeles, The Reader’s Chorus is a group of people who love to read aloud together. We come from varied backgrounds: musicians, filmmakers, poets, visual artists, teachers, etc. We meet every week to experiment with the possibilities of the speaking voice, combining the timbres of differing voices, trying strange speech rhythms and common ones, figuring out ways to have the text move from voice to voice across the room. Members of the chorus bring in a text, something they’ve written or found, and the group, through experimentation, orchestrates it. What we do involves aspects of experimental music practice, poetry, chant, and theater. Our focus, though, is on performing the sound of reading.