The ground-breaking Voice Project choir are to perform a new composition over two nights alongside a major Antony Gormley’s exhibition in West Norfolk.
The Lie of the Land will feature original music by Jonathan Baker, Sian Croose and Orlando Gough inspired by, and responding to Gormley’s Time Horizon installation, which is made up of 100 life-size sculptures and is being staged in the UK for the first time in the ground of Houghton Hall, near King’s Lynn.
The promenade choral show will be staged on the weekend of July 13 and 14 as a promenade piece, with over 100 singers moving through the sculptures. Alongside the choir will be Voice Project soloists, Jeremy Avis, Lisa Cassidy, Sharon Durant and instrumentalist Adrian Lever.
Some of the words for the piece are taken from a Daisy Hildyard essay that accompanies the exhibition describing the journey of the Houghton landscape from its creation and evolution in the ice age to the present day.
Voice Project Co-director Sian Croose said: “Antony Gormley refers to Time Horizon as ‘a field’ and in a similar way the choir is a field. In a way we are one ‘instrument’ rather than individuals when we sing as part of a choir. We will create a piece that uses the stillness of the sculptures and the movement of the singers, playing with the networks and patterns we can create with music, and over 100 breathing, moving bodies.”
Gormley’s 100 sculptures each weigh around 620kg and have an average height of 191cm. They are installed at the same level to create a single horizontal plane across the landscape. Some figures are partially buried, allowing only part of them to be visible, according to the topography.
Although principally Norfolk based, a parallel Voice Project Choir has been established in Sussex and singers from this group as, well as online participants from around the UK, Spain and Ireland will join them for this event.
The Voice Project was formed in 2008 to create ambitious, uplifting and innovative performances pieces for large scale open access community choirs. It has performed several times as part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival including In The Arms of Sleep, Timepiece and the The Observatory.
The choir is part of the wider Voice Project organisation, a music education charity that runs choral workshops, courses in spoken voice and music and mindfulness, and training for professional arts facilitators and performers.
- Tickets costs £22 or £18 concessions, with a small number of £5 bursary tickets available. Further information and ticket bookings at voiceproject.co.uk. Time Horizon is at Houghton Hall until October 31, 2024.
