The Voice Project has a reputation for somewhat theatrical large-scale choir pieces, often featuring austere looking singers in white and black, always with impeccable vocals.
The Life Of The Land varies that pattern a little with a more relaxed dress code for the 100-strong choir that trapses across the quirky landscape of Houghton Hall – grey and cream country linens are the order of the day this time – but the quality of the singing and songs is still spot on.
The piece is slated as a response to Antony Gormley’s Time Horizon installation that is having its UK premiere at the north west Norfolk country estate, with 100 of its own figures dotted through the site.
The piece starts outside the hall’s walled garden with the shows five soloists (Lisa Cassidy, Sharon Durant, Sian Croose, Jeremy Avis, and Jonathan Baker) almost herding us with calls that sound somewhere between sheep dog instructions and bird calls. Inside the garden is the first main choral piece, a gardener’s walking song with hammered dulcimer accompaniment.
In the stable yard things stray dangerously close to indulgent with a one word song – the word ‘then’ repeated over a prolonged period, but the potential irritation is neutralised by dive-bombing swifts and an array of choreographed choral gasps that arrive at just the right time.
The lyrics to the next piece are more muffled, with the choir huddled under the pleached limes and the audience separated from them by a fence and a road, but things are quickly rectified with two pieces in front of the main hall. Solo singers are matched with Gormley’s sculptures, and a surprise echo makes a charming appearance, fully excusing the walks between locations.
Later the choir line up on the hall’s grand staircase, before venturing into the main gardens with umbrellas dramatically held aloft (purely for show given the good luck with this summer’s fickle weather), assembling for a reconstructed version of Jerusalem on the west lawn, and then a reflection on the site’s long history gathered around the mass slate circle that punctuates the boundary ha ha.
The final pieces are staged in the woods, firmly ensconced in nature but with one of Gormley’s cast-iron statues making our human presence indelibly felt.
As with their other pieces, The Voice Project take some risks with their musical choices and settings – but like some sort of choral SAS, who dares wins. This is a playful, provocative, piece, and perfectly matched to Houghton’s quirky landscape.
