Voces8 | |
|---|---|
 Voces8 in 2019 | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | England |
| Genres | A cappella music |
| Years active | 2005–present |
| Labels | |
| Website | voces8.com |
Voces8, styled VOCES8, is an a cappella octet from England. They have appeared internationally and made recordings of classical music, jazz, pop, and their own arrangements. Recent recordings are for Decca Classics and under their own label, Voces8 Records. Educational efforts are run by the Voces8 Foundation.
VOCES8 is a British vocal ensemble originally founded in 2003, [1] and regrouped in 2005, [2] by brothers Paul and Barnaby Smith, both former choristers of Westminster Abbey. [3] [4] For most of its history, the ensemble has contained two sopranos, two countertenors, two tenors, a baritone and a bass. [1] By 2018, one of the countertenors had been replaced by a female alto.
The ensemble has a diverse repertoire including early English and European Renaissance music, traditional folk song, classic jazz, pop and their own arrangements. [5] They have appeared internationally, touring especially in Europe, Asia and North America. [6] [2]
VOCES8 has commissioned new works from composers including Ēriks Ešenvalds, Ola Gjeilo, Jonathan Dove, Jocelyn Hagen, Ken Burton, Roderick Williams, Alexander Levine, Roxanna Panufnik, Mårten Jansson, Ben Parry and Christopher Tin. Jim Clements is their arranger-in-residence. [6]
The octet won the Limelight International Artist of the Year: People's Choice award at the 2021 Limelight Awards. [7]
Their 2022 tour programme was called Stardust, after a composition commissioned from Taylor Scott Davis. [8]
 | This section needs additional citations for verification .(September 2024) |
| Period | First Soprano | Second Soprano | First Alto/Countertenor | Second Alto/Countertenor | First Tenor | Second Tenor | Baritone | Bass |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005–2006 | Rachel Major | Catherine Backhouse | Daniel Keating-Roberts | Barnaby Smith | Charles MacDougall | Thomas Elwin | Paul Smith | Simon Whiteley |
| 2006–2007 | Robin Bailey | Greg Hallam | ||||||
| 2007–2008 | Chris Wardle | Dingle Yandell | ||||||
| 2008–2009 | Andrea Haines | |||||||
| 2009–2012 | Emily Dickens | Robert Smith | ||||||
| 2012–2013 | Oliver Vincent | |||||||
| 2013–2015 | Sam Dressel | |||||||
| 2015–2016 | Jonathan Pacey | |||||||
| 2016–2017 | Blake Morgan | Rob Clark | ||||||
| 2017–2018 | Eleonore Cockerham | |||||||
| 2018–2019 | Katie Jeffries-Harris | Chris Moore | ||||||
| 2019–2021 | Euan Williamson | |||||||
| 2021–2022 | Molly Noon | |||||||
| 2022–2024 | Dominic Carver | |||||||
| 2025–present | Eleonora Poignant |
The VOCES8 Foundation (formerly VCM Foundation) is a UK-registered charity, set up by VOCES8 founder members Paul and Barnaby Smith in 2006 to develop the ensemble's music education and outreach programmes. [10] Awarded a Classic FM (UK) Public Choice Award at the 2020 Music & Drama Education Awards, [11] the charity works across choral and small vocal ensemble performance and education and is based at the VOCES8 Centre at St Anne and St Agnes Church in the City of London.
Foundation artists perform around 200 concerts each year, including through online/livestreaming. [12]
Foundation artists reach up to 40,000 people a year in regular workshops and masterclasses with Music Hubs, schools and community groups. In 2015 the ensemble launched the VOCES8 Scholars Programme which provides training in performing, recording and workshop leading for 20 young singers with an interest in choral singing in the UK and USA. [13]
In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic they launched the VOCES8 Digital Academy featuring tutorials, exercises, learning and performing tracks and videos. [14]
The group has recorded with Decca,Signum, and their own Voces8 Records label. As part of their 15th anniversary celebrations in 2020, the group released their project After Silence, [15] composed of four digital EPs. [16]
The musical term alto, meaning "high" in Italian, historically refers to the contrapuntal part higher than the tenor and its associated vocal range. In four-part voice leading alto is the second-highest part, sung in choruses by either low women's or high men's voices. In vocal classification these are usually called contralto and male alto or countertenor.
Mark-Anthony Turnage is an English composer of contemporary classical music.
Chanticleer is a full-time male classical vocal ensemble based in San Francisco, California, founded in 1978. It is known for its interpretations of Renaissance music, for which they were founded, but also a wide repertoire of jazz, gospel and contemporary classical music. Its name is derived from the "clear singing rooster" in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The ensemble has made award-winning recordings.
The King's Singers are a British a cappella vocal ensemble founded in 1968. They are named after King's College in Cambridge, England, where the group was formed by six choral scholars. In the United Kingdom, their popularity peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s. Thereafter they began to reach a wider American audience, appearing frequently on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the United States. In 1987, they were prominently featured as guests on the Emmy Award-winning ABC television special Julie Andrews: The Sound of Christmas.
SATB is an initialism that describes the scoring of compositions for choirs or consorts of instruments. The initials are for the voice types: S, soprano, A, alto, T, tenor and B, bass. It can also describe a choir, collectively for SATB music.
Patrick Hawes is a British composer, conductor, organist and pianist.
A voice type is a classification of the human singing voice into perceivable categories or groups. Particular human singing voices are identified as having certain qualities or characteristics of vocal range, vocal weight, tessitura, vocal timbre, and vocal transition points (passaggio), such as breaks and lifts within the voice. Other considerations are physical characteristics, speech level, scientific testing, and vocal register. A singer's voice type is identified by a process known as voice classification, by which the human voice is evaluated and thereby designated into a particular voice type. The discipline of voice classification developed within European classical music and is not generally applicable to other forms of singing. Voice classification is often used within opera to associate possible roles with potential voices. Several different voice classification systems are available to identify voice types, including the German Fach system and the choral music system among many others; no system is universally applied or accepted.
The Brockes Passion, or Der für die Sünde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus, is a German oratorio, libretto by Barthold Heinrich Brockes, first published in 1712 and seeing 30 or so more editions over the following 15 years.
There is no authoritative system of voice classification in non-classical music as classical terms are used to describe not merely various vocal ranges, but specific vocal timbres unique to each range. These timbres are produced by classical training techniques with which most popular singers are not intimately familiar, and which even those that are do not universally employ them.
Stile Antico is a British vocal ensemble, specialising in polyphonic early music composed prior to the eighteenth century. Like groups such as the Tallis Scholars or The Sixteen, it has roots in the choral tradition of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, but, unusually for groups tackling complex polyphony, Stile Antico has no conductor. The singers rehearse and perform as chamber musicians, an approach which has been praised by critics.
Nicholas Eliot Spence is a Scottish operatic tenor who performs in opera, oratorio and recital in both the UK and internationally.
Juliette Louise B. Pochin is a Welsh classically trained mezzo-soprano singer, composer/arranger, and record producer. She is known not only for her performances in operas and as a classical recitalist but also for her recordings of operatically styled crossover music. Morgan Pochin Music Productions Ltd, the company she formed with her husband James Morgan, is known for its record productions for artists such as Katherine Jenkins and Alfie Boe, as well as its arrangements for film and television scores.
Roderick Gregory Coleman Williams OBE is a British baritone and composer.
BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme was launched in 1999 by Adam Gatehouse as part of the BBC's commitment to young musical talent.
Ola Gjeilo is a Norwegian composer and pianist, living in the United States.
Nigel Short is a British singer who is the founder and artistic director of the choir Tenebrae and Tenebrae Consort. He was previously a member of The King's Singers.
Jake Runestad is an American composer and conductor of classical music based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has composed music for a wide variety of musical genres and ensembles, but has achieved greatest acclaim for his work in the genres of opera, orchestral music, choral music, and wind ensemble. One of his principal collaborators for musical texts has been Todd Boss.
Robin Tyson is an English countertenor who has a well documented career in opera, solo, and a cappella. He now works in the music management industry and in particular leads in the choral world.
Juliana Hall is an American composer of art songs, monodramas, and vocal chamber music. She has been described by the NATS Journal of Singing as "one of our country’s most able and prolific art song composers for almost three decades" and, in discussing her 1989 song cycle Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush, the Journal went on to assert that "Even at this very early stage in her life and career, Hall knew something about crafting music whose beauty could enhance the text at hand without drawing attention away from that text. This is masterful writing in every respect."
Cries of London is a composition for eight voices by Italian composer Luciano Berio. Originally composed for six voices in 1974, it was expanded in 1976.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
