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Roomful of Teeth

Although Caroline Shaw's composition 'Partita for 8 Voices' made waves when it won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music, I didn't hear it until a few years afterwards. When I did, it made an immediate impression and I ordered a copy of the present CD, which at that point contained the only available recording of the piece. The album's eponymous title is that of the vocal ensemble for whom the 'Partita' was created, and of which Shaw is also a member.

Perplexingly, the 'Partita' is presented out-of-sequence on the disc, and to hear it in its proper order involves listening to tracks 9, 11, 5 and 1 respectively: to my mind a bad and easily-avoidable decision. Perhaps it was ordered that way to guide the listener to pay more attention to the other pieces on the album, variously composed by William Brittelle, Judd Greenstein, Caleb Burhans, Sarah Kirkland Snider & Merrill Garbus, all unfamilar names to me except the last - some of whose work as tUnE-yArDs I had heard and enjoyed.

Of those other works, the two by Garbus are the only ones apart from Shaw's 'Partita' that I keep returning to. I should probably give the others another chance. The eight voices themselves sound wonderful. Very seldom do I warm to the 'classical' (typically operatic) voice: it's doubtless Roomful of Teeth's deployment of all manner of atypical techniques that is central to their appeal for me. The quality of the recording is exceptionally good too.

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