05/26/2023
HELEN LOUISE THORINGTON
November 16, 1928 - April 13, 2023
Helen Louise Thorington was a visionary: “grande dame” of Radio Art in the United States; Founder and Executive Producer of New American Radio; Founder and Co-Producer of Turbulence.org; Founder of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.; collaborator with Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, Barbara Hammer, Jackie Apple, Suzan-Lori Parks and many others; writer, composer, performer, editor, mentor and teacher. She was fiercely independent, enamored with the natural world, politically astute, and fascinated by current research on brain plasticity, memory and consciousness.
Nicknamed "Teedy,” Helen was born in Philadelphia (1928) and grew up in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Richard Wainwright and Katherine Louise (Moffat) Thorington, and sister of Smithsonian Zoologist Richard W. Thorington, Jr.. Although Helen entered college as a medical student, she graduated with a BA in Biblical History from Wellesley College (1950) and went on to attend Union Theological Seminary in New York (1951). While living in New York Helen compiled the index for one of Margaret Mead’s books; was a copy editor at G. P. Putnam's Sons; and worked for the NAACP. She simultaneously re-discovered her passions for writing and English Literature which she studied at the University of Minnesota, Oxford University; and Rutgers University.
In the early 1970s, Helen lived on a farm in Long Valley, New Jersey, hunting, growing food, raising pigs and sheep, and running the Long Valley Inn’s tavern. She moved back to northeastern Pennsylvania where she wrote and directed her musical, “The Frog Hollow Ghost.” To ensure that the music could be recorded, Helen attended a workshop at Dondisound Studios, New York to learn how; she also experimented with a EML 101 Synthesizer which she rented, carried home, and with which she quickly started composing, combining her writing and original music for the first time.
Helen’s first — and National Public Radio’s first — Radio Art composition, “Trying to Think,” was broadcast on Keith Talbot’s “Options” show in 1977. On June 24,1979 Helen’s compositions “Dream Sequence 2” and “The Story” were aired as part of NPR’s “Voices in the Wind” series. She had received a standing ovation for the work at the Airlee Seminar on the Art of Radio, and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters Program Staff wrote that they were “exceptionally good pieces of radio — the kind that we call each other in to listen to.”
Before Helen returned to New York City in 1980, she had also begun composing music for several choreographers in Binghamton, NY. These early dance compositions included “Monkey Run Road,” “Blauvelt Mountain,” and “Valley Cottage” for Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane Dance Company: two of the dances were revived for the company's 20th anniversary for which she performed live at Jacob's Pillow (MA) and The Kitchen (NY) in 2003.
It was because of her early success with NPR — and the encouragement of radio host Larry Josephson — that Helen decided to establish her nonprofit New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA), New York City, 1981. She immediately started commissioning other artists thereby beginning the New American Radio series; by 1998 NAR had commissioned 300 works that had been broadcast on 90 radio stations internationally. Helen launched the careers of many, many artists, generously giving her time to coach and raise funds for them.
While getting NRPA off the ground, Helen continued to write, compose, perform at concerts and festivals, and serve as Radio Editor for “Ear Magazine” (1987-1989). She was commissioned by RAI (Italian radio), RNE (Spanish Radio) and ORF (Austrian radio) among others. She also composed the sound score for Barbara Hammer's video “Optic Nerve,” which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and the Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial (1987). She created a second sound score for Hammer's “Endangered,” which was presented at the Whitney Museum's Biennial (1989). Deep Wireless Radio Art Festival, Canada, commissioned “Calling to Mind,” an immersive surround sound piece that premiered there in May 2005.
As support for New American Radio waned (it was considered “minority” programming), Helen founded the Net Art commissioning website Turbulence.org (1996-2016). She created three works for the Internet: “Solitaire,” “North Country,” and “Adrift. Initiated in 1998, “Adrift” was a cinematic, multi-location, networked performance which combined 3D space, multiple text and image narratives, and richly textured sounds streaming between virtual and real geographies. With her collaborators Jesse Gilbert and Marek Walczak, “Adrift” was performed at Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; Kunstradio, Vienna; the New Museum, NYC; as well as multiple times online.
Helen lectured widely, including “Music in the Global Village,” Budapest; and “Sounding Cultures,” Cornell University. Her writings were published in Contemporary Music Review and “Intermedia Art,” Tate Modern, London. Rip on/off (Switzerland) published a collection of her texts with a CD, “Il est si difficile de trouver le commencement,” in 2017. Helen and Jacki Apple co-authored the limited edition artists book, “The Tower,” which is now in the collections of MoMA and The Getty among many others. Helen’s entire professional archive will soon be housed at the Library of Congress.
Helen is survived by her collaborator and partner of 22 years, Jo-Anne Green; her collaborator and partner of 20 years, Regine Beyer; and a sister, and numerous nieces and nephews. She was deeply loved and cared for by her “village,” Lizi Brown, Marjorie Charney, Nan Frane, Kristine Grimes, Robyn Ochs, Peg Preble, and Deb Whitman.
