Diversity in Three A Cappella Voices From SFP

Trio Mediæval vocalists Linn Andreas Fuglseth, Anna Maria Friman, and Jorunn Lovise Husan (photograph by Håvard Lotsberg, courtesy of SFP)

Last night in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco Performances (SFP) presented the fourth concert to be performed by Trio Mediæval, an a cappella ensemble based in Norway. The vocalists were Linn Andreas Fuglseth and Anna Maria Friman, two of the founders of the group in 1997, and Jorunn Lovise Husan, who joined them in 2018. Their repertoire encompasses three genres:

1. The emergence and growth of polyphony in the fourteenth century
2. Religious folksongs from Scandinavia
3. Works recently composed for the trio

That last category was represented by Missa de Lumine a setting of Mass texts by Sungji Hong composed for the Trio in 2002. The movements of this setting constituted the “spinal cord” of the entire program, providing an engaging reflection on relationships between the distant past and the immediate present. That said, however, last night’s performance had more to do with the prodigious variety of vocal skills than with the selections being performed.

Taking pitch (when it was necessary) only from a limited set of chimes, the trio presented no end of eyebrow-raising moments arising from intimately interleaving vocal lines. The listener was free to consult the texts being sung (along with the translations). However, what really mattered was the razor-sharp skill of each of the vocalists to blend with the other two. The result almost came across as a sophisticated instrumental trio that happened to be structured around texts. This was particularly evident in the folksongs, all of which were arranged by the trio’s founding members, Fuglseth, Friman, and Berit Opheim.

The a cappella performances gave way to instrumentation during the encore selection. It turned out that Friman also played the Hardanger fiddle, which provided accompaniment for a Swedish love song. This offered a refreshing contrast to the austerity of a cappella selections. If the entire program was a journey of discovery across those three genres, the encore provided the “punch line” of one last discovery to send the audience on its way home.