ekmeles Contemporary voices

We’re coming to the end of our individual workshops with composer Thanasis Deligiannis, who is writing a new work for us for our October 13th performance at Issue Project Room.

After working with Thanasis one-on-one, we’re now starting to join up into duos and trios to see how our parts will fit together. The soundworld of the piece is very dynamic, and we’re working with Thanasis to bring out every little filigree and detail of our parts. As a former classical singer, he has a vocal ability that most composers do not. However, having not studied for years, he now simply adapts his technique fully to whatever project is at hand, rather than maintaing a stable classical core sound like we full-time classical singers must. We’re working on adapting our sounds to fit this very specific aesthetic which he’s devised, shouting and crooning, sounding like reversed tape or doppler effects. The alignment of our parts is often totally visual in its representation, leaving us to shape the specific rhythms and interactions of our lines in these workshops, and develop the piece far beyond the page, with Thanasis’s guidance. It’s an interesting mixture of rote teaching and notation, with most of the timbre and articulation details being communicated verbally, and the pitches left to the page. We’re looking forward to joining all together to work tutti soon!