It’s been a half a dozen or more years since Carl Kane, artistic coordinator for Gretna Music at Elizabethtown College, first heard the unique sound of Nordic Voices. He remembers being immediately impressed.
“It’s a how-do-they-do-that-with-their-voices type of sound,” Kane said the of the ensemble’s wide range of techniques, from ordinary classical sounds to Mongolian overtone singing. “It’s contemporary Norwegian mixed with medieval standards. The frisson between the two is fascinating.”
Nordic Voices, an a cappella sextet, that the Washington Post calls ‘mesmerizing,’ brings a compelling program of renaissance and medieval motets and modern masterpieces to Leffler Chapel and Performance Center at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 14, as a part of Gretna Music’s 2014-2015 concert series.
It’s a how-do-they-do-that-with-their-voices type of sound.”
Kane said the all-Norwegian group’s sound stuck in his mind and, when Gretna Music decided to do a season of vocal music, he “thought it was time to bring them out.”
The internationally acclaimed ensemble — Tone E. Braaten, soprano; Ingrid Hanken, soprano; Ebba Rydh, mezzo-soprano; Per Kristian Amundrd, tenor; Frank Havry, baritone; and Trond Olav Reinholdtsen, bass — formed in 1996 from six graduates of the Norwegian Academy of Music and the Norwegian Academy of Opera, who, in addition to their singing backgrounds, have a broad range of experience from choral conducting to teacher training and composition.
This range of interests leads them to explore a wider than usual spectrum of musical expression, from plainchant to new works commissioned from leading Norwegian composers; from the most sacred of religious texts to the definitely profane, noted the ensemble’s website.
“It’s a novel combination,” Kane said of the program selections that range from music composed in the 1400s to present day. With that variety, the audience for Nordic Voices is a bit hard to pin down. “They will be surprised,” Kane said of concert attendees. “When you hear contemporary classical music, when performed well, it is compelling in its own way, especially juxtaposed with medieval and renaissance works.” In addition, the audience can anticipate insertions of very contemporary electronic amplification, sampling, mixing and video-art.
A description on their website of Nordic Voices’ sound notes that the mixing “many would consider extremes.” But, because the performances often revolve around themes — historical figures or textual links, the music comes to life in unexpected ways. In addition to music-making, the performances include a dash of humor.
Nordic Voices, supported by the Arts Council Norway and the State Department of Culture, has five recordings — Sense and Nonsense from 2002, Reges Terrae, 2007; Djonki Don, 2008; Lamentations, 2009; and most recently, Himmelkvad recorded in 2012 – and tours have included Oslo, Norway, Taiwan, Stockholm, German, France, Greece and the United States. Nordic Voices represented Norway at the 7th World Symposium on Choral Music in Kyoto, Japan, in August 2005 and at Euromusicale in Munich at the Final Concert of the Ultima Contemporary Music Festival in Oslo in 2006.
For more information and to purchase tickets check out gretnamusic.org.