Roomful of Teeth: The Ascendant
New Amsterdam Records

Roomful of Teeth: Just Constellations
New Amsterdam Records

The simultaneous release of not one but two EPs by Roomful of Teeth is cause for celebration and even a bit of relief. When the individual profiles of a group's members grow and opportunities arise that demand considerable time away from the shared project, the tendency is for the originating unit to gradually become secondary in importance and eventually dissolve. Such a scenario could conceivably happen to ROT, given the increased visibility individual members are currently enjoying (arguably the most conspicuous being founding member Caroline Shaw, whose Partita for 8 Voices brought her the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 and who's become an in-demand composer). Yet even so here we are with two new releases to remind us again of the vocal ensemble's special artistry.

Assembled by artistic director Brad Wells, the versatile octet, its lustrous harmonies the product of four male and four female voices, has through rigorous study developed the ability to handle any vocal challenge composers such as William Brittelle, Missy Mazzoli, Terry Riley, Julia Wolfe, and Ambrose Akinmusire have thrown its way. No vocal technique or expression, it seems, is off-limits for this multi-Grammy Award-winning ensemble.

Of the two releases, it's Wally Gunn's The Ascendant that will be already known to ROT listeners, given that three of its six songs earlier appeared on the release Render. The EP now offers the chance to hear the work, featuring lyrics and poems by Maria Zajkowski, in its entirety; augmenting ROT's voices is drumming by SO Percussion's Jason Treuting, whose contributions naturally give the work additional heft. For his six-part song cycle, the Australia-born, NYC-based Gunn decided to explore the momentum generated by voices moving in counterpoint by threading hockets, canons, rounds, and the like into the design.

As if designed to accentuate the work's rhythmic dimension, Treuting's drumming is the first sound heard when “The Beginning And” initiates the piece. His swaying pattern establishes an entrancing ground for ROT to sing over, which for this part sees male voices inhabiting the lower register as their partners soar overhead. A state of controlled ecstasy is reached as the movement reaches its climax, after which “The Fence Is Gone” brings the intensity down to a gentler pitch. Gunn here arranges the voices into an intricate tapestry, with at times a lead voice separating itself from the textures provided by the others and in other places the collective exuberantly voicing Zajkowski's words. Slightly earthier by comparison is “Through The Night Wave,” with Treuting punctuating swoops and “na-na-na-na-nah” phrasings with cymbal flourishes, hi-hat figures, and tom-tom patterns.

Enhancing the presentation, male and female singers assume the lead vocalist role in different tracks, the result a performance rich in contrast and timbre. Gunn's work also amplifies the group's range, specifically its ability to alternate between passages of hushed intimacy and ones where the octet sounds like a choir twice its size. Even without an up-close review of Zajkowski's texts, the album title and the track titles “Are We Death” and “Surviving Death” offer an indication of the general subject matter in play. For thirty-two minutes, the vocal ensemble's performance casts a potent spell, the detail-intensive work making one eager to sample more of Gunn's work.

Whereas The Ascendant involves rising from the earthly plane, Michael Harrison's dramatically resonant Just Constellations is already situated high overhead. It's different from Gunn's work in many ways, aside from its fundamental austerity and ethereality. Words are eschewed for syllables, and the material, written in just intonation for eight individual voices, is consistent with Harrison's background. The composer/pianist was brought to New York years ago by La Monte Young as his protégé and holds the distinction of being the exclusive tuner for Young's concert grand; Harrison also lived in Young's Tribeca loft and has performed his monumental The Well-Tuned Piano. In fact, Harrison himself traces the genesis of Just Constellations to the time when he learned to play and tune the piano for the six-hour opus and when he was concurrently studying classical Indian vocal music and exploring how sustained harmonies on the piano could be produced with voices. Building on his experiences with Young, Terry Riley, and Pandit Pran Nath, Harrison is also known for having created the ‘harmonic piano,' a grand piano that allows twenty-four notes per octave to be played.

August 2020