Photo: Reinhard Wilting

This Wednesday, we are invited back to New York's Carnegie Hall to present a world premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-awarded composer David Lang's cycle for choir, the writings. TOV will be performing the new work with the Yale Voxtet - eight talented students from Yale University who, on the days leading up to the concert, have been studying the piece on a workshop, led by TOV and Paul Hillier.

The first half of the concert includes the US premiere of Danish director Phie Ambo's Songs from the Soil - a visual poem that poetically communicates the essence of biodynamics to our ears and senses. Ambo's images have no words or dialogue; instead they are accomapnied by well-known works by Arvo Pärt, performed live by Theatre of Voices and Christopher Bowers-Broadbent.

Photo: Sacrum Profanum

May 26th-29th ACME String Quartet visits Theatre of Voices in Copenhagen to record Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Drone Mass for Deutsche Grammophon, led by Paul Hillier and recorded by producer Francesco Donadello.

Our recent performance at Big Ears in Knoxville, Tennessee, was hailed by Roling Stones as:

“….the glacial drama of minimalism, the familiar harmonies of church music, the keening drama of pop, the deep digital rumble of modern cinema – all in movements that feel about the length of a rock song. Played to a standing crowd in rock club Mill & Mine, the piece made it difficult not to adhere to the unwritten, long-held orchestra rule of not applauding until the end. But after a movement where a vocal drone met a cello slide – the satisfying sound of a properly tuned guitar, an effect like a film coming into focus – the boundary was breached and torrents of applause followed."

Photo: Lars Skaaning

This week we are in great company with Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen and Ars Nova Copenhagen, doing a workshop on Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s ‘non-opera’ called ‘Sun up, Sun down’. This is a pre-study to a future production in collaboration with stage director Jacob Schokking. Paul Hillier conducts the forces - in loving memory of Pelle.