This one-day outing for The Voice Project mixed retrospective with new material, in two concerts at Norwich’s Octagon Chapel.
The Grade II listed venue is spectacular but it does represent a smaller canvas than used in some of the project’s promenade performances. Here the audience was sedentary throughout, with the 100-strong choir making two switches between the balcony and lower pews during the concert.
The programme of 14 pieces was largely drawn from arrangements of existing texts, including by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Herbert, and Emily Dickinson, with music by Orlando Gough and the project’s own Jonathan Baker and Sian Croose, plus a handful of new pieces.
The performance is wilfully austere in places, dominated by the funeral-esque dress of the choice and staccato vocal delivery, particular in Baker’s pieces. Gough’s are slightly freer, bridging choral and jazz. There is even a threat of some performer movement in the closing When I Rise, egged on by Adrian Lever and Rowland Sutherland’s lively accompaniment.
The technical skill of the soloists (Jeremy Avis, Lisa Cassidy, and Sharon Durant, along with Baker and Croose) is clear, as is the accomplishment of the (amateur) choir in coping with some complex arrangements.
But for a chilly January I would have liked the programme to exchange the intellectual pursuit for a little more emotional warmth, a little more joy.
