The Echo Vocal Ensemble is an a-capella choir of 11 (3 members in soprano, contralto, and bass sections, and 2 tenors), and their current tour is built around the theme of nature: celebrating it and hoping it will inspire us to continue to preserve it. Conducted by the passionate Sarah Latto, their combined choral sound was delightful; nicely balanced and their harmonies lush and secure.
I appreciated the summery colourfulness of the choir's costuming; it was however, a little too divergent for a concert. It looked far more like a rehearsal. Some uniformity in skirt length, design, type of footwear, shirt, etc would have been much more 'professional', without losing any of the brightness and airiness.
14 pieces of music were sung; and were a very eclectic mix of styles and eras. The concert started with a 12th century plainchant by Hildegard Von Bingen, making one believe we were inside a church listening to Matins. It was a rather slow and uninspiring start to a concert however, no matter how beautifully sung it was.
The oddest choice however was to ask the choir to sing an improvistion based upon Anohni's "Why Did You Separate Me From The Earth". Again, this felt like something from a rehearsal, and perhaps should have stayed in the rehearsal room. I would have much preferred to have listened to the song as was originally composed.
The rest of the concert featured 2 World Premieres and 2 almost World Premieres. The Ensemble had run a competition for aspiring songwriters to respond to an excerpt from a poem by Alice Oswald, "Dunt: A Poem For A Dried-Up River"; and so this tour performed both the joint winning entries and two of the shortlisted ones. Therefore, during the concert we listened to four different interpretations of the same poem. All very modernist and contemporary in approach using movement, clicks, vocal sounds, atonality, polytonality, difficult rhythmic structures, choral speaking etc to create their soundscapes. These were, James Brady: 'Dunt: A Poem For A Dried Up River' and Lillie Harris: "Already Gone" (joint winners); Rory Wainwright Johnston: "Summoning Dance" and Janet Oates: "Vertue" (shorrtlisted).
The most appealing set of the evening came towards the end of the second half however. The choir sang Vicente Lusitano's "Allar Che Ignuda" (1562), followed by Liz Dilnat Johnson's "For Hester" (1990), which was in turn followed by a traditional isiXhosa song, "Indodana". This set ceratinly garnered the loudest applause of the evening, so it was simply not just myself but the whole audience who felt uplifted and inspired by these three beautifully sung songs.
I do feel though, that as a concert there was something missing: fast tempo, up-beat songs. The vast majority of the music played this evening was all 'moderato' and sung 'mezzoforte'. There was very little variation in the pieces, and what variation there was, was not significant enough. Listening to all four competiton works didn't help in this regard sadly. As interesting as they were, they failed to take the choir into a new dynamic.
Obviously a very talented ensemble, all solosits in their own right, and together their combined sound was harmonious and balanced. An enjoyable evening.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 31.7.21
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