Composer Julia Wolfe stopped by Seagull Hair Salon to try some scissor sounds for her new oratorio. “Fire in my mouth,” is about the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire. She scoured New York’s garment district for the right sounds as well as gracing the salon with her presence to check out the sounds of hair scissors that she included in her new work presented by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Below are some excerpts from The New York Times Article, "Arming a Chorus of Women With Scissors".
Ms. Wolfe was in the market for scissors to be wielded by the women of the chorus in her new oratorio, “Fire in my mouth.” The work, which will be given its premiere on Thursday by the New York Philharmonic, explores the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of 1911, which killed 146 garment workers, mostly immigrant women, including many who were trapped by locked exit doors. Their deaths helped change the way New York and the nation thought about safety, the labor movement and the struggle for women’s equality.
Ms. Wolfe’s previous oratorio about labor in America, “Anthracite Fields,” about the hardships faced by Pennsylvania coal miners, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2015. She is known for her evocative orchestrations and varied sound palettes, and in parts of “Fire in my mouth” she wanted to suggest factories.
She wrote string parts that recall sewing machines, and at several points in the score she included the sound of scissors opening and closing. She imagined the effect as more of a slow, resonant “swoosh” than a staccato, castanet-like “snip.” But she had to find the right ones for the job.
Her next stop was Manhattan Wardrobe Supply, a large store on the eighth floor of a building on West 29th Street that caters to New York’s theater and film industries. Ms. Wolfe tried out some Fiskars shears (“Eliminates Fabric Fray,” the package promised) and some Gingher dressmaker shears (whose package touted “smooth, mistake-free cutting”). Then it was off to the hairdresser’s: the chic Seagull salon on West Fourth Street. Jenna Huber, an assistant stylist, showed Ms. Wolfe a large assortment of barber scissors. But even after the dance music was turned down, they were hard to make out.
“You hear it when your hair’s getting cut,” Ms. Wolfe said, “but I guess it’s close to your ears.”
You can watch the video of Wolfe trying out various scissors here.
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