Roomful of Teeth

Music to sink your teeth into

NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS – Roomful of Teeth, the ensemble of Grammy Award-winning vocal titans led by Williams College professor Brad Wells, returns to its summer home at MASS MoCA creating new works and honing techniques. Teeth’s residency culminates in unforgettable performances, this year to include Richard Beaudoin’s Another Woman of Another Kind featuring Claire Chase and a new arrangement of David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion. Get tickets early to MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center show on Friday, August 24, at 8pm.

During the group’s ninth annual residency at the museum, Roomful of Teeth will spend one week workshopping new and reworked compositions, including those by microtiming pioneer Richard Beaudoin, Bang on a Can founder David Lang, and Mingjia Chen, Mary Kouyoumdjian and Peter S. Shin of the American Composers Forum. The residency will conclude with an innovative program featuring Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning piece Little Match Girl Passion and Beaudoin’s Another Woman of Another Kind, featuring flutist and MacArthur Genius Claire Chase.

Roomful of Teeth was pioneered in 2009 by Wells as an experimental vocal ensemble with the intention to “mine the expressive potential of the human voice.” The group is made up of eight vocalists, including Wells, whose vocal exploration knows no boundaries, resulting in a polychromatic sound that intertwines time-honored singing traditions with the world of contemporary classical music. Roomful of Teeth gathers annually at MASS MoCA to study with masters of Tuvan throat singing, indie rock, yodeling, Persian classical singing, and death metal, to name a few. The ensemble released its eponymous debut album in 2012 and a second studio album, Render, in 2015. They followed up on these acclaimed records with a third studio album released in June 2018, featuring Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia with the Seattle Symphony. In 2016, the group made its New York City premiere at the Met and performed The Colorado, a music-driven documentary film that explores water, land, and survival in the Colorado River Basin. The group’s other recent endeavors include collaborations with A Far Cry and Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards; Tigran Hamasyan on a new piece commissioned by Carnegie Hall; appearances at new music festivals in the U.S., Canada, and Sweden; and partnerships with nearly two dozen higher education institutions across the country.

Roomful of Teeth has performed at Merkin Concert Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, (Le) Poisson Rouge, National Sawdust, Town Hall Seattle, Carlsbad Music Festival, and Fusebox Festival, among others, and has received accolades from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, The Seattle Times, and The New York Times, which called the group’s performance of Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize winning Partita for 8 Voices “precisely, joyously done.”

Roomful of Teeth returns home to MASS MoCA for a one-week residency, including a knock-out finale performance in the Hunter Center on Friday, August 24, at 8pm. Dinner is available from Lickety Split before and during the show. A full bar serves up Bright Ideas Brewing beers and Berkshire Mountain Distillery spirits. Concert tickets are $16 in advance and for students, $26 day of, and $40 preferred. All preferred ticket holders receive free museum admission on the day of or day after the show. Tickets for all events are available through the MASS MoCA box office located on Marshall Street in North Adams, open 10am to 6pm every day, with extended evening hours to 7pm on Thursdays through Saturdays. Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 x1 during box office hours or purchased online at massmoca.org. All events are held rain or shine.

Images
High-resolution images of MASS MoCA’s summer 2018 events are available through this link: bit.ly/2J3V0oU.

About MASS MoCA
MASS MoCA is one of the world’s liveliest (and largest) centers for making, displaying, and enjoying today’s most important art, music, dance, theater, film, and video. MASS MoCA’s 250,000 sq. ft. of gallery space includes partnerships with Laurie Anderson, the Louise Bourgeois Trust, Jenny Holzer, Anselm Kiefer with the Hall Art Foundation, Sol LeWitt, and James Turrell.

Gallery admission is $20 for adults, $18 for veterans and seniors, $12 for students, $8 for children 6 to 16, and free for children 5 and under. Members are admitted free year-round. The Hall Art Foundation’s Anselm Kiefer exhibition is seasonal and currently open for the summer. For additional information: 413.662.2111 x1 or visit massmoca.org.

Hours
Through September 3, MASS MoCA’s galleries are open seven days a week — from 10am to 6pm Sundays through Wednesdays and from 10am to 7pm Thursdays through Saturdays.

Download the Roomful of Teeth press release here.