Roomful of Teeth Redefines Vocal Music for the Future

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2019

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For a new music ensemble, Roomful of Teeth has made an extraordinary impression in a short time. Caroline Shaw, one of its vocalists, received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for “Partita for 8 Voices,” which was written for the group. Then, in 2014, the vocal octet’s début album won a Grammy. Their sound is often otherworldly: apart from the singers’ expertise in classical technique, they have incorporated other musical traditions into their sound, including Tuvan throat singing, Korean pansori, yodelling, and more. Almost all the pieces they perform are new compositions written by or for them, and they hold a residency every year, demonstrating their unique capabilities to the composers who are commissioned to write for them. The staff writer Burkhard Bilger visited the residency at MASS MoCA, a contemporary-arts museum and complex in Massachusetts, in 2018. While they may be the only group that can currently perform the full range of their repertoire, Bilger found that their goal is not exclusivity. “If the songs are good enough, and the techniques are appealing enough, then more and more classical singers will learn how to how to throat sing, will learn how to yodel, and belt, and do Korean pansori,” Bilger says. “And Roomful of Teeth songs will start to sound like yesterday’s classical music.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:11.1	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:14.8	Burkhard Bilger is a staff writer and a man of wide interests, technology, science, nature, sports, food, southern culture,
0:22.7	German history, and much more.
0:25.3	Burke also happens to be a good musician.
0:27.5	He's been singing in choir since he was young, and he keeps a guitar in his office where he's
0:32.1	always noodling on it.
0:33.6	He taught his kids to play old-time music and launched the Bilger family band.
0:38.6	And as his kids grew up, they in turn expanded his musical horizons.
0:43.9	So my son is a bassist, upright bassist and jazz bassist,
0:48.1	and was the first one who told me about Room Full of Teeth.
0:56.0	And so, I don't know, a few years ago, he played me Partita, the Caroline Shaw piece,
1:02.0	and I just thought it was astonishing.
1:05.0	Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I've been listening to choral music my whole life,
1:18.4	and I'd never heard anything like this before.
1:25.0	Every year, the members of Room Full of of teeth get together for a summer residency.
1:30.2	They rehearse new pieces.
1:32.0	They bring in composers who are going to write material for them to perform in the coming year.
1:37.0	The residency is at Mass Mocha, which is a museum in an old industrial town in Massachusetts.
1:43.0	And one summer, Burke Bilger tagged along.
1:51.5	Room Full of Teeth is a vocal octet,
1:54.1	so four men, four women,
	...

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