If you happened to catch the 2016 performance of British a cappella group VOCES8 at Pasquerilla Spiritual Center, you won’t want to miss the group’s return to Centre County on Tuesday at the Penn State Recital Hall.
Group founder Barnaby Smith promises returning audience members all the same fantastic sounds VOCES8 has become known for world-over, only better than ever. For new audience members, he says to expect what he calls “an experience of transcendent beauty.”
“I think when you hear unaccompanied voices that there is a purity to the sound,” he says. “The voice genuinely comes from the soul; it’s a true expression of peoples’ soul, so there is real directness to the nature of the emotive content of the singing, and I think that bears itself in this idea of transcendence.”
Of course, he also says audience members can expect to be entertained, but then also surprised.
Since the 2016 performance, several new faces have joined the VOCES8 group and the group’s repertoire has evolved accordingly. While VOCES8 is known to perform everything from Renaissance polyphony to contemporary commissions, the particular program on schedule for Tuesday’s performance, which is presented along with the Penn State Concert Choir, includes works from composers and artists such as Arvo Pärt, Thomas Tallis, Benjamin Britten, Claudio Monteverdi, Mumford & Sons and Nat King Cole.
This particular tour has been in the planning process for the last two years, including the brief hiatus during the pandemic during which most live performances were postponed. However, even during lockdown, the VOCES8 group was hard at work.
“Our answer to the pandemic was predominantly to try and still get music out there to people,” Smith says.
The ensemble’s VOCES8 Foundation places a heavy emphasis on music education and accessibility for all and the pandemic was an opportunity for the foundation to lean further into that purpose. Almost immediately, the foundation began offering LIVE from Home, a program that provided music, interactive experiences and performances via social media each day at 2 p.m.
“We thought we’d do this for the lockdown… you know, maybe maximum a month long, and I think we ended up doing 110 shows,” Smith laughs. “That led us then to realize that people, of course being locked down for so long, were missing the opportunity to go out to experience musical performance, so we founded a digital festival called LIVE from London… We were trying to put music in peoples’ homes, but it was also an opportunity to offer concerts to colleagues who had suffered such significant loss of earnings. It was just a really nice thing to do, to be able to collaborate with so many people in the industry who you wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to work with, because you’re all off touring different places.”
Still, even with all the new opportunities that the pandemic offered, he and his colleagues are happy to be back to in-person performances. He says the hiatus gave him a renewed sense of appreciation for the stage and he feels audiences are likewise showing a renewed appreciation for live performances — and, if audience members come out to the VOCES8 show with that renewed appreciation, he hopes they walk away feeling an even greater sense of personal renewal.
“We carry so much. Everyone carries so much in their lives on a daily basis that we all need to find a way to refresh ourselves from that,” he says. “Coming to a concert is a very good way to feel renewed…” A limited number of seats remain available for the VOCES8 concert, which takes place at the Penn State Recital Hall, Tuesday, Oct. 12, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased via the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State website at https://cpa.psu.edu/events/voces8-2021.
