It’s true that I don’t get out much anymore which makes this one of my more unusual posts: I actually got to attend a concert as an audience member.
The Octet Victoria is a new cabal of eight highly skilled choral singers performing music from the renaissance onwards. The short of it is that they’re very good and I really hope they keep performing together.
What stood out to me was how much you can appreciate the polyphony more distinctly when each line is coloured by the characteristics of the individual singers. Because the sound of each section in a choir is homogenized by a quantity of singers per part you might not notice a colour difference between a trio of second soprano / second alto / first tenor versus first soprano / first alto / second tenor. But in a small group with one singer to a part you notice it very much.
It’s even more a “Theatre Of Voices” than a full choir because the personalities of each member are allowed to shine more distinctly.
Chris Sivak | Composer 