Sage Jane Harlow : Associate Artist
Sage J Harlow is a vocal improviser and composer of text scores.
Her practices are informed by industrial music, trance and drone;
insight meditation practice, urban shamanism and chaos magick;
feminist, queer and trans practice; and Discordianism.
Harlow's text score compositions have been played at the Audible
Edge Festival, The Blue Room Theatre, State Library of WA and the
Limited Hangout series (Perth); ACCA (Melbourne), Carriageworks
(Sydney) and the Vigorous Tenderness and Feminist Counterpoint
series (both in the USA). She premiered <3 love song, a 50
minute work for spoken word and three instrumentalists at the
Blue Room Theatre in 2024. Her text score opera O,D,E was
premiered at The Blue Room Theatre in 2025 to a sold out season
and critical acclaim.
As a vocalist she performs under the moniker Sage Pbbbt. She
performed as a lead in Cat Hope's opera Speechless, premiering at
the Perth International Arts Festival. She has played at
Liveworks Festival and the NOWnow in Sydney; Tilde~ New Music
Festival and SuperSense Festival in Melbourne; Audible Edge and
the Totally Huge New Music Festival in Perth. Her voice
exploration is deeply indebted to central Asian throat singing
and sound culture. She utilises and continues to explore a wide
range of extended vocal techniques.
Harlow has numerous solo and collaborative releases on Tone List,
Burnt Seed Records and Frustration Jazz (Autralia), संस्कार Rites
(Spain), Mystery & Wonder (Canada) and Edition Wandelweiser
(Germany).
Harlow completed a PhD at the Western Australian Academy of
Performing Arts in 2019 titled: 'Giving voice to the extra-normal
self with the extra-normal voice: Improvised exploration through
the realms of shamanic chaos magick, insight meditation and
gender performance'.
She creates electronic music under the moniker 'digital
penetration' exploring sampling and sound collage. She is also
interested in how improvisation can be incorporated into
composing electronic music. She premiered a video album by
'digital penetration' at Audible Edge festival (Perth) in
2021.
Harlow also plays bass, drums and theremin. She is interested in
tunings systems, timbral-centred listening and ritual magick.
She writes poetry and sometimes academic work.
She is based on Whadjuk Noongar land (Perth, Western Australia).
Biography provided by the composer