Sorrell Hays, Doris Hays & Delia Derbyshire

Update3 8/27/13: We have confirmation from Sorrell Hays herself.  It indeed was her that composed Doris Hays - Scared Trip [1971] in the video below and not Delia Derbyshire.  It was composed using the Buchla 101 keyboard pictured below. I'll see if I can get the WikiDelia article mentioning Delia updated. As a side note, for those on Facebook there's some conversation going on regarding this post here. Laurie Spiegel chimed in as well.

Start of original post before we had confirmation from Sorrell Hays:

This post can be a little confusing, so I thought I'd try and clear it up front.  I spotted this post on It's Full of Stars on Sorell Hays, an electronic artist that used a Buchla keyboard.  I clicked through the link in the post and found that the video directly below wasn't actually by Sorrell Hays, but by Delia Derbyshire.  Apparently Delia produced the tracks under the pseudonym Doris Hays.  The real Doris Hays went by Sorrell Hays and is pictured further below.  I have no idea if there was a connection between the two or if it was all just coincidence, but there you have it.

Update1 via eben in the comments: "hi Matrix thanks for reposting. it is quite a confusing situation! did you see the original post over on toys&techniques from a while back? it seems to suggest that the tracks on the Southern LP 'electronic music' might actually be sorrel and NOT delia - see also the comments to the post:

http://toysandtechniques.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/sorrel-hays.html

to me it sounds more buchla than ems!

its all very intriguing..."

Doris Hays - Scared Trip [1971]

Uploaded on May 21, 2011 TheCoffeeShopShop·2,525 videos
Re-Published on Nov 21, 2014 Doris Hays - Topic

I'm guessing this is a mix of tape and EMS based on the year.  Click here for more posts featuring Delia and EMS at the time.

via WikiDelia: "It is claimed that in 1971 Delia produced 14 tracks of electronic music for the British record label Southern Library of Recorded Music, published as Electronic Music with catalogue number MQ/LP 38[1] under the pseudonym Doris Hays.[2] The other four track on the album are credited to John Matthews, claimed to be John Baker[1] and included on the album 'The John Baker Tapes'."

There is a real Doris Hays who is also a electronic and musique concrète composer, also active in 1971, born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1941.[3]"

Pictured here is Doris Hays [not Delia] who went by Sorrel Hays.  Via her last.fm site: "Sorrel Hays was born Doris Hays in Memphis, Tennessee, but being a “sound” person she decided that “Sorrel” sings (her maternal grandmother’s family name was Sorrels) so in 1985 she adopted the name Sorrel.

In 1971 Hays won first prize at the Gaudeamus Competition for Interpreters of New Music in Rotterdam, and began her international career as a performer of contemporary music. She performed concerts at broadcasting stations in Germany, Holland, Italy and Yugoslavia, appeared at the Como Festival and Pro Musica Nova Bremen, and was invited to celebrate John Cage’s 60th birthday by performing his Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra with the Orchestra at the Hague. She gave the first performance in Europe of her own music at the Gaudeamus Composers Week in Holland in 1972, a composition called Hands and Lights for piano strings with photocell activated switches and flashlights beamed across the interior of a grand piano, a composition which she later performed for the Chattanooga Debutante Cotton Ball.

During 1989-1990 Sorrel Hays was a resident artist at the Yamaha Communications and Research Center in New York City, commissioned to create music for the Yamaha MIDI Grand Piano. These pieces, 90’s, A Calendar Bracelet , for MIDI Grand and tone generator, are recorded by Loretta Goldberg on the CD “Soundbridge” from Opus One."

Buchla at 1:13: Update2: the Buchla is the 200 101 keyboard as seen in this video.

Southern Voices: A Composer's Exploration - PREVIEW

Uploaded on Jun 4, 2009 docued·648 videos

"Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/southern-voi... and on Amazon.

This documentary traces the development and premiere performance of an avant-garde symphonic work by Southern composer Sorrel Doris Hays. Commissioned by the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra, Hays' piece is based on the sounds and rhythms of Southern speech and musical traditions. It is a journey into childhood memories via the melodies and rhythms of Southern dialect. Stoney combines analysis of her work with interviews in which Hays discusses her struggle with racism and paternalism of Southern culture.

a film by George Stoney with Sorrel Doris Hays
distributed by Documentary Educational Resources"

I did a quick search on YouTube to see if I could find anything else and found the following:

Invasion of the Love Drones (1977)

Uploaded on Sep 19, 2009
Invasion of the Love Drones, 1977 sci-fi movie from Jerome Hamlin. Soundtrack by Sorrel Hays, Mike Michaels, Richard Lavsky's Music House and Barry Forgie (uncredited). Additional dialogue by Charles Flowers (uncredited).

Review & more information:
http://atagong.com/archives/2009/09/e..."

Laurie Spiegel Featured on Pitchfork - Intro on NASA's Golden Disk

"The experimental pioneer's groundbreaking work with computers in the 70s and 80s helped lay the foundation for many of today's electronic noise makers.

Probably the most remarkable thing about Laurie Spiegel is that a piece of music she made could be the first sound of human origin to be heard by extraterrestrial lifeforms. If aliens exist, of course. And assuming they have ears.

Spiegel's computer realization of a composition conceived back in the early 17th Century by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler is the opening cut on the Golden Record, a disc that accompanied both Voyager probes on their journey across the solar system and out into the great interstellar beyond in 1977..."

Read the full article on Pitchfork here.  Note the EMLs to her right.  The track that is floating in outer space?  "Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds" performed on the Bell Labs "computer-analog hybrid" below.  Don't miss vintage footage of Laurie performing on the system in this post. The track "Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds" was featured on Spiegel's "The Expanding Unniverse" posted here back in October.   It was the second to last track.  It's fascinating to think the message sent on NASA's Voyager probes opens with a synth.


Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds
video upload by Laurie Spiegel - Topic