This year’s West End Micro Music Festival opened on Friday night at Redeemer Lutheran with a programme titled Ecstatic Voices.  It was a mix of works for eight part a cappella vocal ensemble and a couple of solo tuned percussion pieces.

There’s something a bit special about unaccompanied polyphony.that has fascinated composers ever since the (probably apocryphal) debate on the subject at the Council of Trent.  I think a good chunk of it is the sheer versatility of the human voice which can do so much more than sing a tone.  It can laugh, whistle, speak, grunt, chatter and all manner of other things and if the composers of the Renaissance were happy to stick to tonal singing more recent composers certainly haven’t been.  Both were in evidence n Friday.

The ensemble was made up of eight singers  (Sydney Baedke, Reilly Nelson, Danika Lorén, Whitney O’Hearn, Marcel d’Entremont, Elias Theocharidis, Bruno Roy and Graham Robinson with Simon Rivard conducting) all well capable of singing major solo roles.  This was no semi-pro SATB group!

The “early” element was Tallis’ Lamentations of Jeremiah.  The Latin text, taken from the Vulgate, is split up in ways that are musically delightful but incomprehensible in exactly the way the opponents of polyphony deprecated.  The two modern pieces; Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices and Luciano Berio’s Cries of London made much more use of extended vocal techniques.  The latter especially is rather fun with all sorts of vocal effects and complex atonal music spiced with street cries offering, inter alia, garlic and old clothes.  Great fun.  All of this was performed with great versatility and skill.

The percussion element was Claude Vivier’s Cinq Chansons which was split between the first and second half of the programme.  This was played very nicely by Aiyun Huang on a variety of tuned percussion instruments.

If you are up for some pretty experimental approaches to contemporary and older music WEMMF is always a good bet.  Ecstatic Voices goes again tonight (Saturday)  and there’s another concert next Friday and Saturday; I Saw a New Heaven featuring solo voice, electric guitar and some more obviously classical instruments playing music by Hildegard von Bingen, Sofia Gubaidulina, Cassandra Miller and Kati Agócs.