Philadelphia Native Who Was a Pioneer in Radio Art Remembered

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Helen Thorington sonic art.
Image via Jo-Anne Green.

Helen Thorington, well-known for her sonic art, has left a legacy of radio and internet art, writes Alex Williams for The New York Times.

She recently passed away at the age of 94.

Thorington created haunting sonic compositions using a synthesizer that grabbed the attention of a national audience.

She provided the soundscape for many filmmakers, artists, and choreographers. She was also frequently featured on NPR.

Later, she founded New American Radio, which commissioned more than 300 works that were broadcast on more than 70 radio stations for over a decade.

Thorington loved mixing and matching sounds to tell a story, and her sonic compositions were often part of multimedia collaborations with musicians and visual artists.

She especially enjoyed pulling in sounds from natural environments into her compositions.

In an interview with Ear Magazine, where she was the radio editor in the late 1980s, she compared her mixing and matching of sounds to splicing genes together to create a new being.

“The overall effect,” she said, “is to create a narrative, not as we have understood what narrative is, but another kind of narrative that touches an emotional level.”

Thorington was born in Philadelphia on Nov. 16, 1928, the second of four children of Richard Thorington, a lawyer, and Katherine (Moffat) Thorington.

Read more about Helen Thorington in The New York Times.

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Experience the sounds of Helen Thorington.

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