Variant 6, vocal sextet, releases New Suns on Open G Records on May 20
Debut full-length album features commissions by Joanne Metcalf, Jeremy Gill, and Benjamin C.S. Boyle, plus works by Gabriel Jackson and Bruno Bettinelli
Philadelphia-based group celebrates 21st century a cappella vocal music
On May 20, 2022 the Philadelphia-based vocal sextet Variant 6 releases their debut full-length album New Suns on Open G Records. The album celebrates a widely diverse range of styles and sounds of 21st century vocal music, with works by Joanne Metcalf, Jeremy Gill, Bruno Bettinelli, Benjamin C.S. Boyle, and Gabriel Jackson.
In celebration of the album’s release, Variant 6 performs on Chris Grymes’ Open G Series at National Sawdust in New York City on May 20; and in their hometown of Philadelphia at University Lutheran Church on May 21.
The virtuosic artists of Variant 6 perform with award-winning ensembles around the country, including The Crossing, Room Full of Teeth, Ekmeles, Seraphic Fire and others. On the release of their debut full-length album, they write “The music we offer here celebrates the virtuosic potential of voices singing together. It represents a collection of some of our favorite repertoire from our first half-decade as an ensemble.”
Highlights include works commissioned by the group from Joanne Metcalf and Jeremy Gill. Metcalf’s The Sea’s Wash in the Hollow of the Heart (written in 2020) looks to the past with overt influences from medieval music, while feeling wholly contemporary. The work is set to a poem by Denise Levertov that inspired the album’s title: “Let in new suns that beat and echo in the mind like sounds.”
Gill’s Six Pensées de Pascal (2017) is made up of a symmetrical pitch construction (two scales moving in opposite directions and meeting in the middle). Finding common ground between the poet Blaise Pascal’s Pensées that defend Christianity through a collection of logical 'proofs’, and the composer’s own Atheism, Gill says “Essentially, I allowed myself complete freedom of thought and invention within a highly—and, it must be acknowledged, arbitrarily—restricted world.”
To celebrate the album's release, the sextet performs all of the repertoire on New Suns live in concert in New York City and in their hometown of Philadelphia:
May 20, 7:30 pm in Brooklyn: Chris Grymes’ Open G Series at National Sawdust. Tickets are $25 and available at NationalSawdust.org.
May 21, 8 pm in Philadelphia: University Lutheran Church. Tickets are $25 ($15 students) and available here.
New Suns
Variant 6, vocal sextet
Jessica Beebe & Rebecca Myers, sopranos; Elisa Sutherland, mezzo-soprano; Steven Bradshaw & James Reese, tenors; Daniel Schwartz, bass-baritone
Open G Records
UPC: 195269 164461
Release date: May 20, 2022
Track List
Benjamin C.S. Boyle - Supplice (2019)* -
[1] Tous ce qui ce chauffaient (2:42)
[2] Et que le feu me brûle! (3:48)
[3] Couchons-nous, mon vieux, il est tard (4:42)
[4] Gabriel Jackson - Zero Point Reflection (2014) (11:57)
Bruno Bettinelli - Excerpts from Madrigali a cinque voci miste (1993)
[5] Libere e lievi (2:04)
[6] Sia calmo il mio respiro (3:45)
[7] Quando tutto all’intorno (3:15)
Jeremy Gill - Six Pensées de Pascal (2017)* -
[8] L’éloquence continue (2:43)
[9] Il faut se tenir en silence (2:31)
[10] Les hommes sont si nécessairement fous (0:54)
[11] Le silence éternel (2:46)
[12] La puissance des mouches (2:51)
[13] L’an de grâce (2:50)
[14] Gabriel Jackson - Spring (2005) - (5:07)
[15] Joanne Metcalf - The Sea’s Wash in the Hollow of the Heart (2020)* - (4:15)
*composed or arranged for Variant 6
Variant 6 Biography
Variant 6 is a virtuosic vocal sextet that explores and advances the art of chamber music in the twenty-first century. The ensemble’s work includes radically reimagining concert experiences, commissioning substantial new works, collaborating closely with other ensembles, and educating a new generation of singers.
All of Variant 6’s virtuosic artists regularly sing with the Grammy-award winning choir, The Crossing, and have performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Roomful of Teeth, Bang on a Can and more.