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“Let’s be clear: Roomful of Teeth, thanks to their peerless combination of virtuosity and versatility, are the future of vocal music.” -WQXR
“Their singing is fiercely beautiful and bravely, utterly exposed. There’s no electronic wash to hide imperfections, no other instruments add layers of sound. It’s just these eight voices gleefully filling up a huge amount of space, and drawing upon a whole world’s worth of non-traditional techniques.” -NPR
To celebrate the launching of our Fusebox Festival thinkEAST initiative, Roomful of Teeth will perform a one-night-only concert, marking their first appearance in Austin.
Roomful of Teeth will play, in full, their sophomore record to be released April 28, 2015. Composers featured on the album include ensemble favorites Caleb Burhans and William Brittelle in addition to new music by Missy Mazzoli, Wally Gunn, ensemble tenor Eric Dudley and artistic director Brad Wells.
Building on the group’s eclectically powerful, GRAMMY Award-winning 2012 release, this new collection of works pulls at intricate subtleties with a patient, artistic breadth, though not without an element of athletic virtuosity. Wally Gunn’s trio, The Ascendant, sets poetry by Maria Zajkowski in a patient, incessant groove, straddling the boundaries of an unnameable corner of contemporary classical music; Eric Dudley’s Suonare floats in an ether that seems impossible, effortlessly blending English and Italian texts through cascading, seductive soprano melodies.
NPR states about Brad Wells’s otherwise, “the agility of the voices and multicolored blend they achieve are extraordinary.”
Music journal I Care If You Listen calls Wells’ second composition on the album, Render, “objectively and subjectively gorgeous.”
Roomful of Teeth follows Battle of the Golden Ages: Cumbia vs. Hip Hop, featuring Adrian Quesada and the children of East Austin, to kick off Fusebox Festival at thinkEAST (7pm).