Ekmeles: We Live the Opposite Daring
New Focus Recordings

Whereas another vocal ensemble might channel its collective energy into a seasonal programme of Yuletide chestnuts, Ekmeles dives headlong into obscure classics of the historical avant-garde and radical new works rooted in alternative tuning systems and innovative vocal techniques. These microtonal specialists have delivered world premieres of works by John Luther Adams, Taylor Brook, Ann Cleare, Christopher Trapani, and others and recently saw their efforts recognized with the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation's 2023 Ensemble Prize, the first American group to be so honoured.

Enthusiastic collaborators, the vocal sextet—soprano Charlotte Mundy, mezzo-soprano Elisa Sutherland, countertenor Timothy Parsons, tenor Tomás Cruz, baritone (and artistic director) Jeffrey Gavett, and bass Steven Hrycelak—has partnered with equally forward-thinking groups such as Talea Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, New Chamber Ballet, and loadbang in presentations of pieces by Wolfgang Rihm, Luigi Nono, and David Lang. On We Live the Opposite Daring, Ekmeles' follow-up to its head-turning 2020 debut A howl, that was also a prayer, the group turns its attention to new material by Zosha Di Castri, James Weeks, Hannah Kendall, Shawn Jaeger, Erin Gee, and Gavett.

Much of it's demanding, to be sure, but Ekmeles more than meets the challenge. No work better illustrates the high level of difficulty involved than Weeks's Primo Libro, whose sixteen concise madrigals requires the group to painstakingly sing in thirty-one-division equal temperament. While it feels related to quarter-comma meantone, a temperament commonly used in the Renaissance and early Baroque periods, the micro-divisions separating the thirty-one intervals (which means all notes are approximately 1/5th of a tone apart) give the work a decidedly modern feel. At the same time, the scoring of these madrigals for one, two, three, and four voices strengthens that connection to an earlier time. The microtonal pitches that emerge over the course of the eighteen-minute performance are naturally riveting when so many are unfamiliar, and hearing the singers' voices spiral through the work is at times vertigo-inducing.

The five other settings are no less arresting, each one imaginatively conceived and captivating to hear. In reimagining Sappho's ancient Greek poetry through a modern lens, Di Castri's We live the opposite daring also couples new and old. The first movement begins the work with the singers slapping their thighs in a steady triple-metre rhythm as they sing, their voices at certain moments gathering into resonant chords and elsewhere splintering into whoops, smears, and glissandi. The second movement takes experimentation to a further extreme when animalistic utterances, growls, hisses, and other cryptic vocalizations surface. Movement three charges into position with body percussion and a cartwheeling voice effect igniting an explosive array of declamations and chords. Soothing by comparison is the contemplative, chorale-like closing movement, a satisfying choice arriving as it does after the furious pace of the penultimate one.

Kendall describes this is but an oration of loss as a reimagining of “the songs, cries, lamentations, incantations, and sighs” of M. NourbeSe Philip's book-length poem “Zong!,” itself a reworking of a legal transcript detailing the drowning of 130 enslaved Africans thrown off a British slave ship in 1783. The ear's instantly caught by an introduction of softly wheezing harmonicas, which gradually shifts to a blossoming of vocal harmonies and furiously whispered fragments. References to the horrific event surface through the vocal haze, with words flickering across a dense array of harmonicas and voices. Meanwhile, the text for Jaeger's playful meditation love is comprises near-rhymes and anagrams derived from a text by feminist scholar bell hooks that explores the challenges associated with the word. The hypnotic interweaving of overlapping vocal lines and spoken phrases makes for a gripping, oft-ecstatic tapestry.

The three-part Waves was written by Gavett for a performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art using Oliver Beer's Vessel Orchestra, an instrument assembled from hollow objects in the Met's collection capable of producing a chromatic scale. Activated through feedback using individual microphones, Gavett controlled the instrument from a keyboard and sang as he played. The timbres that resulted prompted him to compose Waves as a series of beating patterns of glissandi and “almost-unisons.” In place of the no-longer-existing Vessel Orchestra, he used pre-existing samples of Ekmeles' voices to generate the dazzling panorama. Concluding the album is Gee's four-part Mouthpiece 36, which she created using 150 improvised vocal sounds as source material. Amazingly, the composer adds to the already staggering wealth of vocal effects already heard in the other works when whistles, clicks, whispers, neighs, and pops work their way into the presentation, the work's second and fourth movements particularly amazing in that regard.

February 2024