ABSTRACT
Cathy Berberian was a twentieth-century avant-garde singer whose experiments with theater, vocal improvisation, composition and performance changed the way people thought about, and composed, vocal music. Her collaborations with Berio, Cage and other composers of her era are well documented, and are good examples of performer-developed material. This chapter investigates Berberian's influence on six contemporary avant-garde singer-composers whose work can also be categorized as performer-developed: Meredith Monk, Susan Botti, Rinde Eckert, Pamela Z, Theo Bleckmann and Joan La Barbara. Although Berberian's formal compositional output was extremely limited, her vocal research was ground-breaking and she contributed vocal material to her collaborations and improvisations in a way that was clearly performer-developed. Berberian's all-encompassing curiosity, musical breadth, virtuosic technique, and performing and improvising skills have been a source of inspiration to a great variety of singer-composers over the years.
