Roomful of Teeth offers major moments of joy
Like any self-respecting new-music ensemble, the choral group Roomful of Teeth has a host of unorthodox performing techniques at its command.
The eight members can whoop and wail, mumble and whisper, sing from their throats and heads and everywhere in between.
[...] the group’s signature stroke — one that recurred repeatedly during Roomful’s dazzling local debut on Sunday, April 23 — is one of the oldest tricks in the choral arsenal.
When one of those harmonies hits, especially in the midst of something more eclectic or elusive, it’s like a sudden burst of absolute radiance.
the Taube Atrium Theater was a co-presentation as part of San Francisco Performances’ Pivot Series and SF Opera Lab, and it offered an overdue chance to experience this group’s vocal magic in a live setting.
Roomful of Teeth, formed in 2009 by Artistic Director Brad Wells, gathers each year in North Adams, Mass., and for many listeners, the group first swam into view four years ago, when Caroline Shaw’s “Partita for 8 Voices” — composed for the ensemble by one of its members — was a surprise winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Another member of the ensemble, Eric Dudley, contributed “QuietUs,” a meditation on “Hamlet” built out of a single distinctive melodic gesture clothed in ever-shifting counterpoint, and Anna Clyne’s “Pocket Book” put a pair of sonnets to work enlivening a limited harmonic palette.