From Brahms to Bond, Voces8 mixes it up

Top British a cappella group Voces8 are making waves yet again in Bermuda — due to popular demand they are treating us to an extra performance.

The group, formed by ex-Westminster Abbey choristers, made their mark on the island in 2010, also performing to sell-out crowds.

Not a group to rest on their laurels, they will be bringing fresh material this time around, mixing their standard classical repertoire with a lighter set celebrating popular British musicians from The Beatles to Mumford and Sons.

What’s more, they have been inspiring Bermuda’s young musicians with a series of workshops which will culminate in a performance by the group at City Hall at lunchtime today.

Speaking to the Bermuda Sun, band member Paul Smith said: “We are very happy to be coming back, we loved the reception we got there last time.

“This year we are doing two contrasting shows — one is the choral sacred classical music and one is the British Invasion so there will be lots of jazz and pop numbers.

“The classical progamme we have is centering on a theme of the Mass For Four Voices by William Byrd and a lot of our favourite core repertoire spanning four or five centuries of music.

If You Love Me by Tallis is a beautiful piece of renaissance music. There are some nice spirituals in there as well and we are seeing a piece by Brahms which is an absolute monster of a piece — it is just so rich harmonically. It is just beautiful.

“After that we are singing our British Invasion Show which has a bit of a James Bond theme but we a will also feature other artists such as Mumford and Sons, The Beatles and, of course, Queen.”

They decided on the James Bond theme to tie in with the 50th anniversary of the spy thriller series.

With this in mind they have been working with no fewer than 320 local school children on a performance of Adele’s Skyfall which they will be singing on the steps of City Hall today at 12:15pm.

Smith said that wherever the group travels they are involved in educational programmes.

“Education is something that is very important to us. We work with about 20,000 students a year  — when you are working with children you have to want to be there, you have to care about it and you have to be passionate about it otherwise, it tends to be, that they find you out. We spend a lot of our time doing it — we have performed with about 3,000 children over the past ten days. It is great fun.”

Voces8 also demonstrated a new musically oriented educational tool they have been developing that is designed to improve students’ academic achievements.

He explained: “It is a whistle stop education project. Music isn’t just something you do in music time it can feed in to maths, literacy, linguistics.

“Part of the sessions we do here we start off with a warm up process we get them to sing but alsoit is about getting their brains focussed for the rest of the academic day.

“We have been working with the Education Institute in London and I have written a book that is coming out later this year called the Voces8 Method which is specifically about getting
students prepared for the school day. There is a lot of layer building around movement, left and right coordination and then rhythms and vocal sounds – fairly simple singing basically. We have created a method which any teacher, even if they are not a musician, can still learn how to teach. We have been designing apps for the iPhone and online videos so that the teacher has all the things they need to be able to teach it even when we are not there.”

Voces8 will perform at City Hall tomorrow, Friday and Saturday night at 8pm.
Tickets are $65 or $25 for students and are available from www.bdatix.com as well as Bermudatix outlets.
Their free performance with local school children is today on the steps of City Hall from 12:15pm to 12:45pm.