New Amsterdam Records on Tuesday released Roomful of Teeth, the eponymous debut recording from a vocal octet whose membership hails largely from Yale University.
The Yale School of Music announced on Wednesday that “the ensemble includes a rich cast of Yale alumni: Estelí Gomez ’08BA, Caroline Shaw ’07MM, Eric Dudley ’03MM, ’04MMA, ’11DMA, and Dashon Burton ’11MM as well as current YSM/ISM student Virginia Warnken ’13MM,” and that “alumni composers featured on the album include Rinde Eckert ’75MM, Judd Greenstein ’04MM, Sarah Kirkland Snider ’05MM, ’06AD, and group member Caroline Shaw.”
The New Amsterdam Records website describes the group thus: “Roomful of Teeth is a vocal octet dedicated to re-imagining singing in the 21st century. Through study with vocal masters from non-classical traditions theworld over, Roomful of Teeth continually expands their vocabulary of singing techniques and, through an on-going commissioning project, invites today’s brightest composers to create a repertoire without borders.”
Reached by telephone on Friday, Brad Wells, who earned his doctoral degree from the Yale School of Music in 2005, said the “genesis of wanting to do a new music vocal group goes all the way back to when I was in college.”
As distinctive singing styles have become more familiar, thanks to the Smithsonian Institution’s Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and Nonesuch Records’ Explorer Series, Wells believed that those vocal traditions should be included in new music — in part to benefit composers and also to “break open what a singing group could be.”
Wells lamented that so-called “classical” vocal music is considered by many to be a higher vocal art form than others.
Wells, who received an undergraduate degree from Principia College in Illinois and a master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and who is on the faculty of the music department at Williams College in Massachusetts, began putting Roomful of Teeth together in 2008.
He auditioned potential singers knowing that he needed folks who had great vocal chops and could sight-read, learn, and perform new works quickly, and who were musically flexible.
The nonprofit group’s debut recording is the culmination of work done over four years during periods of residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, where vocalists from divergent musical traditions have joined the octet to coach its members while commissioned composers observe and write.
As part of a local residency program, Roomful of Teeth is scheduled to perform on Feb. 26 at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Learn more about Roomful of Teeth and its debut album at the ensemble’s website and at the New Amsterdam Records website.