Theatre of Voices
Encyclopedia
Theatre of Voices is a vocal ensemble founded by baritone Paul Hillier
in 1992; it focuses on early music
and new music
.
The ensemble was formed by Paul Hillier
while he was teaching at the University of California, Davis
, as an avenue to performing more contemporary music while his other group, the Hilliard Ensemble
, focused primarily on early music. Originally based in the United States
, members of the group originated from both the United States and England
. After Hillier's move to Copenhagen in 2003, membership in the group became more international, with members drawn from Denmark
, Poland
, England, and the United States.
The group has collaborated with a number of composers, including Steve Reich
, Arvo Pärt
, and John Adams
. They premiered Reich's The Cave along with Reich and his musicians
, while Reich'sProverb
(1995) was written specifically for the ensemble. Theatre of Voices also premiered John Adams
' El Niño, the DVD of which was the recipient of a Grammy
), while their recording of Pärt's De profundis was in the Billboard
Top Ten Albums.
The group records with Harmonia Mundi USA and tours internationally.
The ensemble's membership varies according to the needs of the specific project they are working on; however the members listed below are most consistently involved.
Paul Hillier
Paul Douglas Hillier is a conductor, music director and baritone. He specializes in early music and contemporary art music, especially that by composers Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and the Guildhall School of Music, beginning his professional career while a...
in 1992; it focuses on early music
Early music
Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...
and new music
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
.
The ensemble was formed by Paul Hillier
Paul Hillier
Paul Douglas Hillier is a conductor, music director and baritone. He specializes in early music and contemporary art music, especially that by composers Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and the Guildhall School of Music, beginning his professional career while a...
while he was teaching at the University of California, Davis
University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...
, as an avenue to performing more contemporary music while his other group, the Hilliard Ensemble
Hilliard Ensemble
The Hilliard Ensemble is a British male vocal quartet originally devoted to the performance of early music. Founded in 1974, the group is named after the Elizabethan miniaturist painter Nicholas Hilliard....
, focused primarily on early music. Originally based in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, members of the group originated from both the United States and England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. After Hillier's move to Copenhagen in 2003, membership in the group became more international, with members drawn from Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, England, and the United States.
The group has collaborated with a number of composers, including Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
, Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...
, and John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
. They premiered Reich's The Cave along with Reich and his musicians
Steve Reich and Musicians
Steve Reich and Musicians, sometimes credited as the Steve Reich Ensemble, is a musical ensemble founded and led by the American composer Steve Reich to perform his compositions. This ensemble has premiered many of Reich's works and has performed his works more than any other...
, while Reich'sProverb
Proverb (Reich)
Proverb is a musical composition by Steve Reich for three sopranos, two tenors, two vibraphones, and two electric organs. It sets a text by Ludwig Wittgenstein. It was written in 1995 and was originally intended for The Proms and the Utrecht Early Music Festival...
(1995) was written specifically for the ensemble. Theatre of Voices also premiered John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
' El Niño, the DVD of which was the recipient of a Grammy
Gramophone Award
The Gramophone Awards are one of the most significant honours bestowed on recordings in the classical record industry, often referred to as the Oscars for classical music. The winners are selected annually by critics for the Gramophone magazine and various members of the industry, including...
), while their recording of Pärt's De profundis was in the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
Top Ten Albums.
The group records with Harmonia Mundi USA and tours internationally.
The ensemble's membership varies according to the needs of the specific project they are working on; however the members listed below are most consistently involved.
Members (prior to 2003)
- Ellen Hargis - sopranoSopranoA soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
- Steven Rickards - countertenorCountertenorA countertenor is a male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of a contralto, mezzo-soprano, or a soprano, usually through use of falsetto, or far more rarely than normal, modal voice. A pre-pubescent male who has this ability is called a treble...
- Paul Elliott - tenorTenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
- Alan Bennett - tenor
- Paul HillierPaul HillierPaul Douglas Hillier is a conductor, music director and baritone. He specializes in early music and contemporary art music, especially that by composers Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and the Guildhall School of Music, beginning his professional career while a...
- baritoneBaritoneBaritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or... - Christopher Bowers-BroadbentChristopher Bowers-Broadbent-Biography:He was a chorister in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, and went on to study organ and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, where he was taught by Arnold Richardson and Richard Rodney Bennett. His made his debut at the Camden Festival in 1966; his first major recitals were at...
- organPipe organThe pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
Discography
- William ByrdWilliam ByrdWilliam Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.-Provenance:Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely...
: Motets & Mass for 4 Voices (1994). - Orlande de LassusOrlande de LassusOrlande de Lassus was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance...
: St. Matthew Passion; Paschal Vigil (1994). - Carols From the Old & New Worlds (1994).
- Proensa (1994) - various medieval.
- Joan Airas de Santiago and King Dinis I of Portugal: Cantigas from the Court of Dom Dinis (1995) - Cantigas de Santa MariaCantigas de Santa MariaThe Cantigas de Santa Maria are 420 poems with musical notation, written in Galician-Portuguese during the reign of Alfonso X El Sabio and often attributed to him....
and songs. - Thomas Tallis: Lamentations, Motets, String Music (1996)- works by Thomas TallisThomas TallisThomas Tallis was an English composer. Tallis flourished as a church musician in 16th century Tudor England. He occupies a primary place in anthologies of English church music, and is considered among the best of England's early composers. He is honoured for his original voice in English...
- Steve ReichSteve ReichStephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
: Proverb/Nagoya Marimbas/City Life (1996) - The Age of Cathedrals (1996) - various Notre Dame schoolNotre Dame schoolThe group of composers working at or near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced, is referred to as the Notre Dame school, or the Notre Dame School of Polyphony....
composers. - Arvo Pärt: De Profundis (1997).
- Carols from the Old & New Worlds, Vol. 2 (1998).
- John CageJohn CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
: Litany for the Whale (1998). - Monastic Song: 12th Century Monophonic Chant (1998).
- Home to Thanksgiving (1999).
- Hoquetus (1999) - medieval HocketHocketIn music, hocket is the rhythmic linear technique using the alternation of notes, pitches, or chords. In medieval practice of hocket, a single melody is shared between two voices such that alternately one voice sounds while the other rests.In European music, hocket was used primarily in vocal...
s. - Arvo Pärt: I Am the True Vine (2000).
- Ingram MarshallIngram MarshallIngram Marshall is an American composer and a former student of Vladimir Ussachevsky and Morton Subotnick. Son of Bernice Douglas and Harry Reinhard Marshall, Sr. He was a talented soprano in the Boy's Choir at the Mt. Vernon Community Church, and was influenced early by noted music instructor,...
: Kingdom Come; Hymnodic Delays; Fog Tropes II for String Quartet and Tap (2001) - Fragments (2002).
- The Cries of London with FretworkFretwork (music group)Fretwork is a consort of viols based in England, United Kingdom. Formed in 1986, the group consisted of six players, while it is currently five viols...
- Karlheinz StockhausenKarlheinz StockhausenKarlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
: StimmungStimmungStimmung, for six vocalists and six microphones, is a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968 and commissioned by the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Köln. Its average length is seventy-four minutes, and it bears the work number 24 in the composer's catalog...
(Copenhagen Version). Else Torp, Louise Skovbæch, Clara Sanabras, Wolodymyr Smishkewych, Kasper Eliassen, Andrew Hendricks; Ian Dearden, sound diffusion. (recorded 2006). Harmonia Mundi CD HMU 807408. (2007). - David LangDavid Lang (composer)David Lang is an American composer living in New York City. He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion.-Biography:...
: The Little Match Girl Passion (2009)