Variant 6: New Suns
Open G Records

How do I know New Suns, the debut full-length from the Philadelphia-based vocal sextet Variant 6, will be terrific before a single note's heard? Easy: its members—sopranos Jessica Beebe and Rebecca Myers, mezzo-soprano Elisa Sutherland, tenors Steven Bradshaw and James Reese, and bass-baritone Daniel Schwartz—regularly sing with The Crossing and perform with other distinguished vocal ensembles, among them Roomful of Teeth and Ekmeles. All such outfits have issued exceptional recordings, so there's no reason to expect Variant 6's will be any different.

In featuring six works (half composed for Variant 6) by Joanne Metcalf, Jeremy Gill, Bruno Bettinelli, Benjamin C. S. Boyle, and Gabriel Jackson, the album presents some of the group's favourite repertoire and intimates in its title hope for a world slowly re-emerging from a devastating time and a resolute belief in the promise the future holds (the title, in fact, comes from Denise Levertov's words in Metcalf's The Sea's Wash in the Hollow of the Heart, “Let in new suns that beat and echo in the mind like sounds”). The mere fact of six voices singing together is itself cause for joy.

The physical recording of the project was initiated in late 2019 with the goal of completing it the following year. Of course the pandemic's onset forced sessions to be pushed ahead, such that only in the summer of 2021 could the singers reconvene to finish what they started. Their singing sounds all the more compelling when one becomes aware of the struggle involved in bringing the album to completion.

One of the more appealing things about Variant 6 is that its a cappella tapestries are woven by six voices, enough to produce a glorious polyphonic sound but not so many that the listener can't separate one strand from another. Such clarity in the arrangements allows for an enhanced appreciation of how the singers' parts intertwine and of each member's vocal artistry. The clarity of the recording itself also enables the contribution each singer's making to come into sharp focus.

The programme itself satisfies on multiple counts. Structurally, it mixes three multi-part works with three standalones, two of the latter by Jackson. No piece better recommends the release than his Zero Point Reflection (2014), a twelve-minute showcase for the vocal splendour of the group's female voices. Set to a poem by Doris Kareva, the piece unspools as a stream of arresting flourishes, with the voices alternately uniting, splintering, and staggering. A multitude of vocal effects occurs, from swoops and percussive textures to whispers and spoken passages, yet Jackson's haunting creation comes gloriously together when executed by this stunning trio. Elsewhere, his euphonious treatment of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem in Spring (2005) captures the revitalizing feeling the season's arrival engenders.

Set to Paul Éluard's poem of the same name, Boyle's three-movement Supplice (2019) was originally composed for Singing City, a choir featuring over 100 singers, but a version was created in 2019 specifically for Variant 6. Its voices mesmerize from the outset, and it doesn't hurt that Boyle's lyrical writing gives them such magnificent material with which to work. As happens repeatedly on the album, the intricate entwining of the group's voices proves arresting, never more so than during the hushed “Couchons-nous, mon vieux, il est tard.”

Gill's Six Pensées de Pascal (2017) sets music to phrases from Blaise Pascal's Pensées that seek to defend Christianity through a collection of logical ‘proofs,' an interesting choice given the composer's an atheist. The piece is as interesting on musical grounds for being built from a symmetrical pitch construction, with one scale going up and another going down and meeting in the middle. What one hears, however, is an intricate and endlessly fascinating embroidering of voices (the audacious “La puissance des mouches,” for example), whether they be declaiming in unison or entangling in rhythmic spirals otherwise.

July 2022