The Tunnel Singer

The Tunnel Singer uses live improvisation and the phenomenon of sound wave behavior in tunnels to create music. In her latest release, Sailing the Solar Wind, she creates a virtual acoustic space electronically, combining vocals, percussion, field recordings and electronic processing.The Tunnel Singer has performed live coast to coast, appeared on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the Hallmark Channel television. Her music has been played on Hearts of Space, Musical Starstreams, Stars End, Canadian, Netherlands and National Public Radio. Now available at iTunes Music Store!

Lee Ellen Shoemaker is The Tunnel Singer, a San Francisco-based performance artist and vocalist. Born in Kokomo, Indiana in 1936, singing in spaces with long natural reverberation has been a passion since childhood. Shoemaker's mother and father taught her to harmonize with them. She enjoyed playing the family piano, but resisted learning to read music or practice scales, preferring to improvise. She remembers listening to classical music on the floor-model Philco radio, but favored tuning in unusual sounds between stations on short-wave bands. Her mother reports that as a toddler she sang with the drone of the vacuum cleaner whenever it ran.Graduating in 1985, Shoemaker studied painting, drawing and video at University of California, Davis. She often describes her music as painting with sound. Accepted for graduate studies at San Francisco State Universitys Center for Experimental Interdisciplinary Art she studied Performance and Life Art. She took extensive cinema and script writing courses prior to transferring to the Instructional Technology Department where she earned her masters degree in multimedia development. She designed, published and maintains her website at www.tunnelsinger.com.Shoemaker improvised with a saxophone player she met in a Golden Gate Park tunnel in 1992. He convinced her to sing with him at Cafe International in San Francisco. After a few cafe appearances with the saxophonist, she decided to try a solo performance with a Tibetan singing bowl. The audience was entranced. She continued performing at café open mics.Requests for recordings encouraged her to produce her albums. Stephen Hill (Hearts of Space) referred her to an engineer with the willingness and equipment to record live performances in tunnels. Her debut album, Inner Runes (1995) is recorded in the tuned acoustics of the Exploritorims Sound Column located in a rotunda support column of San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts.Her second album, Ravens in Moonlight (1997) is recorded live in a fog-muffled World War II artillery tunnel with ravens occasionally heard in the background. It includes didgeridoo and percussion. Peter Thelen of Exposé Magazine describes Ravens in Moonlight as, somewhere between Dead Can Dance and Transmission. She traveled to Port Townsend, Washington to record her third and fourth albums. Water Birth (1999) is recorded live in the Cistern Chapel," a vast underground concrete cistern. In its 45-seconds long reverberation her voice becomes a soundscape for an undersea voyage, evoking deep peace. Ben Kettlewell comments in Alternate Music Press, "The compositions on Water Birth evolve like a wordless mantra, suggesting an underwater environment of sea creatures, slow undulation of underwater plants and inner space. Echoing voices cascade against each harmonic overtone to produce a giant modulating chord. Returning to Port Townsend, she completed her fourth album, Night Skies (2000). Recorded in a U-shaped mortar magazine the music evokes mythical images of an alchemical journey. Omni-directional reverberations suspend earthly compasses. Songs inspired by Moon harp and constellations provide touchstones for following a star path toward inner tranquility.Having a virtual tunnel available 24-7 to create music inspired The Tunnel Singers interest in music sequencers. She spent the next nine months learning software and exploring the transition from live improvisation in tunnels to composed music. When she heard about a solar sail that could revolutionize space travel someday, her imagination soared. As she learned more about this technology, dreaming of solar breezes drew the charts for the music on her fifth album, Sailing the Solar Wind. (2003).

Each Sunday at noon (weather permitting) I sing in a tunnel at Construction 129--Marin Headlands--Golden Gate National Park--California. The scenic views of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco skyline are the best in the Bay Area. Sometimes ravens sit in the redwood trees outside the tunnel to join in the music.

Hildegard von Bingan, Brian Eno, Dead Can Dance, Transmission