Yesterday evening Volti, the Bay Area’s a cappella vocal ensemble that specializes in new music, presented the third of the four mini-concerts, each highlighting the work of single composer, constituting its 42nd season. This was a particularly special occasion, since composer Joel Chapman sings low bass in Volti performances and is also a conductor. Furthermore, those who have come to know him through his performances are aware of the extent of his physical disability.
The new work he offered to Volti is entitled “Interdependence.” He provided his own lyrics for his music. Furthermore, as was the case with the second Volti mini-concert, performing Danny Clay’s Singing Puzzles, the performance was realized through video to allow for distancing among the vocalists. Chapman provided all the video direction for the execution of his music, working with Technical Consultant Andrew Forsythe. Finally, in acknowledging the many different manifestations of disability, titles were provided for the entire video, accounting for not only the entire libretto but also a “context” of potentially relevant keywords.
In some ways “Interdependence” served as a complement to Mark Winges’ “distanced concerto,” “Spun Light,” presented by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble this past Monday evening. However, the “performance” of that concerto emerged through a meticulously post-edited video, working with pre-recorded content from each of the six performers. “Interdependence,” on the other hand, was, for the most part, a “live” performance, with all the spontaneity one expects from Volti in a concert setting. Readers probably know by now that the Volti motto is “singing without a net;” and that extended to a “real-time” presentation of Chapman’s premiere.
There was thus an added element of excitement in experiencing this intricately-conceived creation being presented for the first time. Nevertheless, there was also a prevailing rhetoric of playfulness in the execution of Chapman’s score, whose libretto basically traverses the four seasons of the year (taking the same order one encounters in the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi). The first two of those seasons (spring and summer) are scored entirely around vocalizations. The Introduction was a setting of text, amounting to a very personal statement by Chapman about what he can and cannot do; but the words do not return until his cycle has advanced to the fall season.
The video content is just as imaginative as the music and the text. Each of the sixteen vocalists (four in each range) has a solo part. However, from the beginning, Chapman plays with the very idea of being a soloist. The Introduction is performed by two solo vocalists, but it is visualized through four video frames. In the upper two frames we see the vocalists themselves. However, each of those heads is situated over another body, which is there to provide the “titles” for the text being sung:
courtesy of Volti
As the score develops, the viewer becomes more and more aware of the highly intimate interrelationships by which the eye guides what the ear sees and vice versa, as well.
In the note he prepared for the concert’s program, Chapman reflected on his choice of title by describing his composition as “a celebration of interdependent joy.” While one could appreciate much of that interdependence through the intricate polyphony weaving among the individual voices, it was through the video that one could grasp the rhetorical significance of Chapman’s creation. Indeed, the very idea that the process of music-making could involve audio and video on equal terms left me wondering what it would be like to have another vocal ensemble make its own video account of Chapman’s composition.
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