• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content

MASS MoCA

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

  • Login
  • Visit
    • Get Tickets
    • Plan Your Visit
    • FAQ & COVID Info
    • Directions
    • Groups
    • Stay
    • Eat
    • Accessibility
    • Courtesy Code
    • More than a Museum
    • 1040 MASS MoCA WAY North Adams, MA 01247

      We're closed today.

  • Events
  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Long-Term
    • Sound Art
    • Sol LeWitt
    • Anselm Kiefer
    • Past Exhibitions
      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Sarah Oppenheimer S-334473

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Jenny Holzer

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Louise Bourgeois

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        James Turrell: Into The Light

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Laurie Anderson

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Anselm Kiefer

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Sol LeWittA Wall Drawing Retrospective

      View All
  • Performing Arts
    • Upcoming Performances
    • Artists-in-Residence
    • Past Performances
      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Here and There A One-Day Festival Curated by Courtney Barnett

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Roomful of Teeth & Friends

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Terence Blanchard feat. The E-Collective & Turtle Island Quartet

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        FreshGrass Festival 2022

      View All
  • Education
    • Main
    • Kidspace
    • Schools & Educators
    • MASS MoCA From Home
    • Families & Community
    • Adult Education
    • Museum Hours

      Wednesdays–Mondays
      10am–6pm

    • Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

      Subscribe
    • Contact

      413.662.2111
      info@massmoca.org

      Buy Tickets
    • Museum Hours

      Open every day
      10am–6pm
      Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

    • Contact

      413.MoCA.111 (413.662.2111)
      info@massmoca.org

      Buy Tickets
      Subscribe
  • About
    • Main
    • History
    • Leadership
    • Contact Us
    • More than a
      Museum
    • Assets for Artists
    • Statement on Equity and Antiracism
    • Press Room
    • Jobs & Internships
    • Host Event / Rent Space
    • Land Acknowledgment
    • Museum Hours

      Wednesdays–Mondays
      10am–6pm

    • Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

      Subscribe
    • Contact

      413.662.2111

      Contact Us

      Buy Tickets
    • Contact

      413.662.2111
      info@massmoca.org

      Buy Tickets
      Subscribe
    • Museum Hours

      Open every day, 10am–6pm

      Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

  • Shop
  • Join/Give
    • Main
    • Join Now!
    • Donate Now
    • Membership
    • Host Event / Rent Space
    • Museum Hours

      Wednesday–Monday
      10am–6pm
       

    • Contact

      413.662.2111
      info@massmoca.org

    • Buy Tickets
    • Donate Now

Roomful of Teeth

  • The MASSMoCA Blog
  • Posted August 15, 2017
  • Performing Arts

For Immediate Release
15 August 2017
Contact: Jodi Joseph
Director of Communications
413.664.4481 x8113
jjoseph@massmoca.org

Roomful of Teeth

Music to sink your teeth into

NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS — Roomful of Teeth, the ensemble of Grammy-winning vocal titans led by Williams College faculty member Brad Wells, returns to its summer home at MASS MoCA to create new works and hone techniques, culminating in a knock-out performance on Saturday, August 26, at 8pm, in the Hunter Center.

During the group’s eighth annual residency at the museum, Roomful of Teeth will spend two weeks in the Berkshires workshopping new music by seven composers, including acclaimed composer and song leader Alice Parker and vocal coach and metal singer Androo O’Hearn. The group will also visit new music by composer and singer-songwriter Ellis Ludwig-Leone (of the chamber-pop group San Fermin, which performed at MASS MoCA in 2015); composer and architect of the micro-timing technique Richard Beaudoin; composer and multi-instrumentalist William Brittelle; writer, composer, musician, and Guggenheim Fellow Rinde Eckert; as well as by Brad Wells himself.

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, Sardinian cantu a tenore, 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. Making its New York City premiere in 2016, the group performed The Colorado at the Met, 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 Nick Zammuto of The Books; 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 two-week residency, including a pop-up performance of Ted Hearne’s Coloring Book in Nick Cave’s expansive installation Until on August 23 at 4:30pm, and a knock-out finale performance in the Hunter Center on Saturday, August 26, 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. The pop-up performance is free with admission to our galleries. Concert tickets are $16 in advance and for students, $22 day of, and $28 preferred. 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 2017 events are available through this link.

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 nearly doubled its gallery space in spring 2017, with artist partnerships that include Laurie Anderson, the Louise Bourgeois Trust, Jenny Holzer, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 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 on view. For additional information, call 413.662.2111 x1 or visit our website.

Summer Hours (through September 4)
10am to 6pm, Sundays—Wednesdays
10am to 7pm, Thursdays—Saturdays

Download the Roomful of Teeth Press Release

TAKE PART

Mass MoCA Instagram Mass MoCA Facebook Mass MoCA Twitter
LOGIN ABOUT HOST EVENTS / OFFICE SPACE PRIVACY POLICY

It is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) rests on the ancestral homelands of the Muhheaconneok or Mohican people (People of the Waters That Are Never Still) and the Wabanaki peoples. Despite tremendous hardship in being forcibly relocated from these lands by Dutch, English, and US colonizers, today the Muhheaconneok or Mohican community resides in Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community The Wabanaki Confederacy, also known as The People of the Dawnland, include the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki Nations, who are indigenous to the lands with the English placenames Maine, Vermont, northwestern Massachusetts, and parts of Canada, and continue to reside in these areas. We pay honor and respect to these ancestors past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all. More information can be found here.

MASS MoCA

1040 MASS MoCA WAY
North Adams, MA 01247

413.662.2111

info@massmoca.org

Copyright © 2022 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

MASS MoCA Sponsors
Mohawk Trail Region MCC Barr Foundation Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism New England Foundation for the Arts National Endowment for the Arts
May 7, 2022 - January 23, 2027
x

As of June 27, masks are optional in the galleries, though are still required for indoor performing arts events, learn about our COVID-19 policies here.