Creative Capital

Helen Thorington

Helen Thorington began her career as a writer with short stories and other fictional forms that were published in small press magazines and journals throughout the 70s. In 1977 she made a transition to sound. Her early sound/ music works include compositions for post-modern dancers Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, among them Monkey Run Road, Blauvelt Mountain, and Valley Cottage; and works for radio.

Her productions for National Public Radio were among the first radio art works broadcast nationally. From 1977 to 1998 Thorington continued to produce for radio. Her programs were aired nationally and internationally in over fifteen countries. Commissions included works for RAI (Italian radio), RNE (Spanish Radio) and ORF (Austrian radio). 

Thorington also composed sound scores for film. Her first film score was for Optic Nerve by Barbara Hammer, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial exhibition. She received a New York State Council on the Arts Music Commission to create a second sound score for Hammer’s Endangered, also presented at the Whitney Biennial.