Join us for the climax of Vox Urbane's Inaugural London Season: Responses. A series of three curated concerts which reflect upon past musical traditions and offer a new vision of what classical choral music can be, who it is for, and who it can represent.
Responses III, the final concert in the season features a world premiere of Shiva Feshareki’s ‘Geometry of Echoes’. This is a new piece for Turntables, Live Spatial Electronics and Choir encapsulating a moment in space and time, written especially for Vox Urbane and Feshareki to perform at St John at Hackney. The piece is never the same twice and responds to the energy and acoustics of the space, manifesting live in-the-moment in sonic spontaneity. Based on medieval tuning systems, ‘Geometry of Echoes’ is a partner piece to ‘Lamentations’ by the 16th Century London-born composer Robert White. Both works focus on the spirituality of sound and respond to the atmosphere. The title and concepts of “Geometry of Echoes’ is inspired by the book ‘The Poetics of Space’ by Gaston Bachelard, especially the following paragraph:
Like the house of breath, the house of wind and voice is a value that hovers on the frontier between reality and unreality. No doubt a realistic mind will remain well this side of this region. But for the poetry lover who reads with joy and imagination, it is a red-letter day when he can hear echoes of the lost house in two registers. The old house, for those who know how to listen, is a sort of geometry of echoes. The voices of the past do not sound the same in the big room as in the little bed chamber, and calls on the stairs have yet another sound. Among the most difficult memories, well beyond any geometry that can be drawn, we must recapture the quality of the light; then come the sweet smells that linger in the empty rooms, setting an aerial seal on each room in the house of memory.
Founded by Helen Meyerhoff and Dan Ludford-Thomas, Vox Urbane is a professional vocal ensemble with a mission to tackle the lack of diversity in classical choral music. We represent marginalised voices through our lineup of artists of diversity – ethnicity, socio-economic, gender and neurodiverse. We are also fostering a new wave of talent – seeking out and nurturing outstanding singers of diversity for the future.
Vox Urbane’s sell-out launch concert took place in 2023 at the Asylum Chapel, Peckham. It was hailed by Musical America as “an auspicious launch for an important and accomplished new voice on the choral scene” and received a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review from The Guardian who said that the group “impresses and inspires” with “a different, diverse perspective”.
