Partita for 8 Voices

Roomful of Teeth have been hailed as the future of choral music. The eight singers that make up the American vocal ensemble – four women, four men – together span five octaves, and

accordingly their range runs the full gamut from deep growl to high-pitched shriek. Three of them have perfect pitch; all eight of them are classically trained. Singer and conductor Brad Wells established the group in 2009 and since then has flown in a host of different experts to teach his singers the most wide-ranging and obscure vocal techniques in an effort to broaden their palette. From yodelling to death metal growling and throat singing - there’s nothing that’s too out there for the ensemble. The bulk of their repertoire has been written especially for them, and so they are able to incorporate all of these disparate techniques into their concerts, resulting in a truly unique sound.

In 2014 Roomful of Teeth won a Grammy Award for their self-titled debut album. The previous year, ensemble member and mezzo-soprano Caroline Shaw won a Pulitzer Prize for her Partita for 8 Voices. At the time she was just thirty years old, making her the youngest ever recipient of this award.

Brad Wells considers it his mission to break with the centuries-old traditions that have come to be rules set in stone in the world of Western vocal music. He and the predominantly young, progressive composers he works with manage to make music that sounds classical and modern at the same time – as much folk music as it is high art. In a recent article in The New Yorker titled ‘Roomful of Teeth Is Revolutionizing Choral Music’, Wells cites Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, who once declared that his generation of composers had freed instruments to play beyond their prescribed sounds, and that it is now the younger generation’s time to free the voice. When he founded Roomful of Teeth, he told the singers that he didn’t want the group to sing the standard choral repertoire, nor songs from other cultures. The goal was nothing less than to build a ‘new kind of instrument’ – not copying, but creating from scratch.

Partita for 8 Voices is an excellent example of the ensemble’s lofty ambitions and the way that they result in stunning music. The piece consists of four movements: ‘Allemande’, ‘Sarabande’, ‘Courante’ and ‘Passacaglia’. The piece opens with spoken instructions that seem to come from one of the many dance rehearsals that Shaw accompanied as a violinist before she joined Roomful of Teeth. ‘To the side. To the side. To the side and around. Two-three-four.’ Then the voices erupt into a soaring harmony that suggests a widescreen Appalachian panorama. Partita for 8 Voices is a showcase of Roomful of Teeth’s many talents: from spoken language, yodelling and percussive breathing to pansori, Appalachian traditional music (from the Appalachian Mountains in the Eastern US) and many other techniques – all find a place in this piece.

After winning the Pulitzer, Shaw was able to move in the highest echelons of the musical world, working with artists including The National and Kanye West. Roomful of Teeth were suddenly playing huge venues, such as the Lincoln Center and Disney Hall. The British newspaper The Guardian did a profile of Shaw under the headline ‘Is Caroline Shaw really the future of music?’ The article did not attempt to answer that question, but everyone can make up their own minds at their performance in the Muziekgebouw on June 15.