We Live The Opposite Daring
New Focus, 2024
8/10
Listen to We Live The Opposite Daring
The Ekmeles vocal ensemble, spearheaded by the director Jeffrey Gavett, bring their distinct vocal prowess to these new works by Zosha Di Castri, James Weeks, Hannah Kendall, Shawn Jaeger and Erin Gee.
Weeks’ “Primo Libro” starts the listen with fluid voices harmonizing amid much warmth and grace, where Gavett’s baritone is especially noteworthy, and “We live the opposite daring”, by Di Castri, follows with Charlotte Mundy’s glowing soprano surrounded by the layered voices that create much atmosphere.
Kendall’s “this is but an oration of loss” arrives in the middle, and presents a unique minimalism that involves both whispered and spoken moments of harmonic gestures, while “love is” offers spoke and sung voices that overlap and build into a powerful conclusion for the Jaeger piece.
Gavett’s “Waves” resides near the end, and blends Elisa Sutherland’s mezzo-soprano, Timothy Parsons’ countertenor and Tomás Cruz’s tenor with much attention to mood in the 3 wordless segments, and Gee’s “Mouthpiece” exits with influence from electronic music, and explores nasal, whistling, breath and plenty of other improvised vocal sounds via the clever finish.
A body of work that takes timbre, pitch and microtonality into careful consideration, Ekmeles flesh out a fascinating and atypical a capella affair.
Travels well with: Yu-Hui Chang- Mind Like Water; Douglas Boyce- The Bird Is An Alphabet