#vocalimprov

On Thursday November 6 at The Great Hall in Toronto, Tanya Tagaq generously invited Christine Duncan and The Element Choir to join her, Jesse Zubot and Jean Martin on stage for the first time since her Polaris Prize win. The Great Hall performance marks the start of the 'Animism' CD tour that will take her to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Montreal and into the eastern States. See it if you can! http://tanyatagaq.com/

Our 45 person Element vocal contingent was on stage for the entire show. It offered us the opportunity to listen to Tanya speak to the sold-out  crowd which included author Joseph Boyden and veteran actor Tantu Cardinal leaning on the edge of the stage in adoration. It was beautiful to watch the crowd's anticipating, smiling faces hanging on Tanya's every word. Her earthy openness and grounded connection as well as the intimacy of the beautiful old building gave the feeling that we were in a small town community hall not on Queen West in downtown Toronto. And we had the best seats in the house!

Tanya's performance began slowly, gently and as always was other-worldly - or perhaps more precisely - of-this-worldly. As her gutteral, rhythmic, dualistic improvisations built and flowed, she seemed to call up the entirety of human experience vocally and physically during the length of her 70 minute set. 

We waited to be called on by Christine as Tanya, Jesse (electro-acoustic violinist) and Jean-Martin (percussion) flowed into the first of many musical climaxes. Eyes riveted we awaited  Christine's first hand-cue to describe the type of sound we were to provide and when. Contrary to our vocal approach when performing as a solo choir, our direction in this context was to respond as one instrument to engage with the fabric of what was being laid down by the trio on stage.

All musicians on stage fed off of the other; Tanya responding to our soundings as we would hers and in kind Jesse and Jean-Martin. Christine was our fulcrum-conduit selecting the moments, texture and timbre that we were to provide - the rest was up to us. Among our vocal palette were soundscapes of water droplets, scraping steel and tonal riffs inspired by Jesse's violin & Tanya's vocals, all underpinned by Jean-Martin's ever-changing primal rhythms. In addition, our sounds were digitized, looped, delayed and slowed to create another bed of texture for the performance. 

Here's a description of the experience from the audience:

' One memorable aspect of (Tagaq's) performance is the sheer range of emotional and musical territory that she covers...Jesse Zubot of Vancouver energetically tortured his electrically amplified violin and controlled the menacing electroacoustic component of the performance. Jean Martin of Toronto evoked an entire world of sound from his drum kit, at times attacking it with positively deafening enthusiasm. The 40-voice Element Choir under its director, Christine Duncan, stood on a riser at the back of the stage. The choir is as adept at improvising as the other musicians, responding with astonishing unanimity, immediacy, and sensitivity to Duncan’s expressive hand gestures. Duncan in turn was totally attuned to Tagaq’s performance, using her choir to brilliantly amplify and comment on Tagaq’s musical ideas." - Musical Toronto

And then the moment arrived where the force of sound and the experience in the hall culminated with a sudden end to the wall of sound leaving Tanya's lone voice hanging in the velvety black silence...and it was done, and we all returned having journeyed magically together.

In the green room after the performance the choir members erupted in a spontaneous singular tone reminiscent of an OHM chant. It grounded us and our experience returning us back down to the real world after such a resonant dreamtime experience.