Cyane is the new moniker of American composer, performer and sound artist, Sage Elaine Fisher.  Her work for harp + voice + electronics is exposed, ethereal, sensual and textural, drawing on pop, R&B, avant classical and early choral music influences. Hot takes, incantations and translucent songs about love and power, gravity, surrender and interdependence, delivered with arresting vulnerability and fierce grace.

 

Fishers' previous project, Dolphin Midwives, was known for abstracted harp, voice and percussion using electronics, extended techniques and ritualized processes and has since evolved into the lucid and fierce pop-leaning, vocal-driven Cyane, throughout the creation of Body of Water (Beacon Sound, 2021), the chrysalis of the COVID-19 pandemic, and stepping into the healing arts field..

 

Sage Elaine Fisher has spent the last seventeen years studying classical, pop and Indian classical voice, choir, music theory, composition, romantic, folk and classical harp, guitar, psychoacoustics, electronic production, experimental percussion, and ritual to arrive at her unique sound. Her first album, under the moniker Nadine Mooney, was released in 2008 by Tender Loving Empire. She then underwent a series of life-altering events that necessitated a six year hiatus from the public eye. She returned in 2012, playing harp in an electroacoustic experimental trio, Waver Clamor Bellow where she got her first taste of live electronic manipulations. She soon returned to solo performing, this time under the the Dolphin Midwives moniker. Dolphin Midwives' debut, Orchid Milk, was self-released on limited-edition tape in 2016 (re-released by Obsolete Media Objects). Fisher's installation, Naturaphones, shown in 2017 in Portland, OR at The Bison Building, was the culmination of a six month residency for PNCA+OCAC, and featured four large-scale acoustic sculptures, ambient performance, and several sculptural prototypes. She founded and directed Dröna Choir to perform her original choral work, invisibility ritual; exploring the vastness between silence and sound, and performed on the new moon in total darkness. Her sound art performance/installation, Break: preparations for the apocalypse, was shown at Variform in 2018. Liminal Garden, Fishers’ debut studio album, was released internationally in 2019 by Beacon Sound/Sounds et al to critical acclaim, earning the artist mentions in The New York Times, SPIN, and The Guardian, among other publications.  In 2019, Dolphin Midwives joined the ranks of Portland's “Best New Bands” according to the Willamette Week.  In 2020 she teamed up with Grammy-winning producer, Tucker Martine, to record Body of Water. The pop-leaning transitional album, released July 2021 by Beacon Sound, was awarded Bandcamp Album of the Day and Best Oregon-Made Album of 2021 (PDX Monthly) and was praised by musikexpress, AudioFemme, Brainwashed, Beats Per Minute, and Treble Zine, and more. Shedding the Dolphin Midwives moniker and coming out of the shadows, as lucid, transformed and unabashed Cyane, marks a healing journey and a climatic step into power for the artist.