This week’s concerts will also feature violinist Stefan Jackiw, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, organist Ruben Valenzuela and pianist and SummerFest Music Director Inon Barnatan
One of the world’s most-streamed classical vocal groups, VOCES8, recently caught the ear of a couple of influential people: singer-songwriter Paul Simon and La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest Music Director Inon Barnatan.
Simon invited the Grammy-nominated, London-based choir to work with him on his much-praised 2023 album “Seven Psalms” (more on that later in this story). And Barnatan invited VOCES8 to participate in three SummerFest concerts at the Baker-Baum Concert Hall this week. These performances will also feature such stellar artists as cellist Alisa Weilerstein, violinist Stefan Jackiw and Barnatan himself on piano.
“VOCES8 performs about 128 concerts a year, which means we probably sing to between 100,000 to 150,000 people, in the flesh, every year,” said countertenor and VOCES8 Artistic Director Barnaby “Barney” Smith, speaking via Zoom from London.
“But via YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music, we connect with 40 million people. We make music to bring about positive change in the world. That’s why we exist.”
VOCES8 mezzo-soprano Katie Jeffries-Harris, also in the Zoom meeting, chimed in: “One of the joys of Voces8 is versatility in the repertoire that we cover. Our albums are very different from each other.”
The group released a new album, “To Sing of Love,” earlier this year and another, “Nightfall,” in September. VOCES8 produces two or more albums annually on the internet to better spread its music.
At SummerFest this year, VOCES8 will consist of seven of its members and a substitute filling in for departing soprano Molly Noon. That sub is San Diego resident MaryRuth Miller.
Miller is a member of Lyyra, a U.S.-based professional six-voice women’s a cappella group. It operates under the umbrella of the VOCES8 Foundation, a choral music education charity.
Miller is one of three singers who will audition for VOCES8 in San Diego for a permanent spot. Auditions are being held in the U.S. during VOCES8’s tour and in London and Australia.
“We identify the singers as soprano altos, tenors and basses. But really, within the group, everybody is very flexible,” said Smith, who — with his brother Paul — co-founded the ensemble and foundation in the early 2000s.
`Vibrant and Vivid’
On Wednesday, VOCES8 will perform two short pieces, a kind of “dipping its toes” in the four-week-long SummerFest before the two subsequent concerts at which they’re featured.
Music Director Barnatan hopes that the audience at Wednesday’s concert will see how works by Mozart and Estonia’s 88-year-old Arvo Pärt — two very different composers from different eras — can complement each other.
Violinist Jackiw will perform Mozart’s Dissonance and Pärt’s Speigel im Speigel (Mirror in the Mirror).
“Speigel im Speigel is an exploration of the infinite,” Jackiw said, speaking from Pasadena. “Pärt captures this sound through a still, serene violin line, floating above an inexorable and kaleidoscopic piano mantra.
“The opening of Mozart’s Dissonance has a kind of mysterious air to it, which perhaps reflects the kind of uncertain timelessness of the Pärt piece.”
The Wednesday concert will close with Weilerstein playing Pärt’s Frates, one of his best-known works.
VOCES8 will take center stage Friday, performing in all but one piece of the concert, which is billed as “Gratitude.” The evening will begin with an early Bach cantata.
“Bach BWV 150 is an aesthetic and sonic journey in its own right,” VOCES8 co-founder Smith said. “With seven movements, it’s quite a significant cantata — a colorful, vibrant and vivid setting of an interesting text.”
VOCES8 will then present songs from its repertoire, ranging from Rachmaninoff and Beethoven to American composers Caroline Shaw, Jake Runestad and Reena Esmail.
The first piece, “O Clap Your Hands” by medieval English composer Orlando Gibbons, is close to Smith’s heart.
“My older brother, Paul, left home to be a chorister,” recalled Smith. “I cried every night, so my mom bought me a tape of ‘O Clap’ and I fell in love with it. I was 6 and it set me on my musical journey.”
The Friday concert will close with Beethoven’s much-loved Piano Trio in B-flat major, also known as the Archduke Trio. It ill be performed by Barnatan, Weilerstein and Jackiw. The violinist played the work with his Junction Trio at La Jolla Music Society’s Baker-Baum Concert Hall this past May.
Jackiw has performed separately with Barnatan and Weilerstein, but they haven’t played as a trio.
How will the piece change with this lineup?
“There’s an infinite range of possibilities,” Jackiw replied. “From large questions like: ‘What is this piece about?’ to more specific ones, like: ‘How large or slight should the crescendo be’?”
”I’ve done Archduke many times with Junction Trio. Playing with Alisa and Inon, I’m sure I’ll learn things I haven’t even noticed before.”
Expanding the bubble
“In Loving Memory,” the title of next Sunday’s afternoon concert, will begin with Ravel’s notoriously thorny Duo for Violin and Cello. Jackiw will pair up with cellist Sterling Elliott, who he met at SummerFest a few years ago and plays with often.
Prior to this year, Jackiw had never performed Ravel’s Duo. In fact, every piece Jackiw will play in SummerFest this year — except the Archduke Trio — will be firsts for him.
”Inon’s really making me work!” he said with a laugh. “But I’m looking forward to playing these new pieces and an old favorite.
“This Ravel is edgy and grainy. It’s sometimes combative between instruments. Sterling brings energy, thoughtfulness and creativity to every collaboration.
“With smaller pieces like this and the Archduke Trio, you get closer and more intimate collaborations.”
Fauré’s Requiem, which will close next Sunday’s concert, features VOCES8 as well as10 SummerFest instrumentalists and noted French conductor Ludovic Morlot. Jackiw will be the solo violinist.
San Diegans might notice familiar faces onstage. The San Diego Symphony’s principal bassist, Jeremy Kurtz-Harris, and principal harpist, Julie Smith Phillips, are part of the ensemble, as is Bach Collegium San Diego Music Director Ruben Valenzuela, who will play organ.
“The Fauré Requiem is some of the most comforting and beautiful music ever written, and it all happens economically in about 35 minutes,” Valenzuela said. “It contrasts with other requiems in that it’s gentle and transparent…quite the contrast to something like Verdi’s Requiem. And, at SummerFest, this beautiful music will be performed by some of the very best!”
While VOCES8 has performed before in La Jolla — the ensemble has participated in the St. James-by-the-Sea music series — this will be its SummerFest debut. After what Jeffries-Harris describes as a very wet London summer, the group’s members are looking forward to being in San Diego.
“We have pictures of Katie and me jogging on the beach in La Jolla,” Smith said. “We’d like to do that again, but we don’t have any days off. But we’ll be working with musicians who we know only by reputation. It will be a very nice trip.”
Jeffries-Harris agreed. “We work closely with each other in VOCES8 so much,” she said. “Expanding that bubble is very exciting.”
Singing with Paul Simon
We asked VOCES8 mezzo-soprano Katie Jeffries-Harris and countertenor Barney Smith about the collaboration between their choral ensemble and Paul Simon on his acclaimed 2023 album, “Seven Psalms.”
Jeffries-Harris: “Barney got an email out of the blue: `Hello from Paul Simon. I’m a huge fan’.”
Smith: “I thought it was spam or a joke!”
Jeffries-Harris: “Paul had explored our recordings during lockdown. It was a huge thrill. It was fascinating working with him in Houston. He’d go into the studio not knowing what he wanted. He’d say: `Try this’ or ‘Why don’t you try that’?”
Smith: “His language is poetry and guitar while ours is sheet music. We’d be there for eight hours and felt we had done nothing. But he’d sleep on it. And the next day he’d say: ‘Do you remember this bit from yesterday… ?’
Jeffries-Harris: “When we got to the end of day two, he asked us: ‘Have you heard the album?’ He sang the album live to it. We felt privileged to be in that room.”
Smith: “We listened as he sang two or three feet away from us.It was quite cool!”
SummerFest 2024
Midweek Masterworks: Mozart & Pärt
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 7
Tickets: $45 -$103
Gratitude
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 9
Tickets: $63-$108
In Loving Memory
When: 3 p.m. Aug. 11
Tickets: $90-$108
Where: Baker-Baum Concert Hall, Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, 7600 Fay Avenue, La Jolla.
Phone: (858) 459-3728
Online: theconrad.org