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EXAUDI Premieres Oliver Leith’s Hallelujah amen in a Special Concert Curated by the Composer for Kings Place

Feb. 16, 2024

On February 28, EXAUDI and James Weeks premiere Oliver Leith’s Hallelujah amen as part of a program curated by the composer for London’s Kings Place. A 10-minute work for unaccompanied mixed voices in six parts, Hallelujah amen was commissioned by the Parabola Foundation. Read an interview with Leith discussing the program here. 

Hallelujah amen is cast in two sections. The first sets the two words of the title, though Leith disturbs and distorts his ‘Hallelujah’ with extra syllables – as if a tongue-twister – and asks the singers to give it a blurry, loose character, creating a complex melismatic surface. By contrast, the ‘Amen’ – clear and open – floats above this dancing filigree. The following section sets the words ‘Sanctus O’ and ‘gloria’. The latter receives the same smudged treatment as ‘Hallelujah’, with long smooth glissandi, whistling, and wolf howls also emerging from the texture.

The program is titled Thrilly Marvel Chants. Inspired by a grainy film of the Deller Consort singing madrigals around a table, the concert ranges from Hildegard von Bingen to Ligeti and Luboff, and a few surprises of Leith’s own devising. Alongside the eclectic selection of styles, Leith’s experimental curation sees pieces superimposed, affected with highly stylised deliveries, and presented with drastically altered and distorted pitches and tempi. He is inspired by “the spirit of singing” evoked in the film – “wild sound”. EXAUDI, like the Deller Consort, will present the program gathered around a long, large table.

They will also perform Cassandra Miller’s Guide, a 13-minute piece based on one of Miller’s mother’s folk records: "Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah," recorded by Maria Muldaur in 1968. “I knew right away”, said Miller of Guide, “that I would attempt to write a piece about ‘the feeling of freedom one gets from singing’.” Premiered by EXAUDI in 2013, the group also performed it the 2023 Aldeburgh Festival, where Miller was an artist-in-focus.

Additionally, the US premiere of Leith’s critically acclaimed debut chamber opera Last Days was given by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and longstanding collaborators GBSR Duo at Walt Disney Hall, conducted by Thomas Adès. The February 6 performance was co-directed by Anna Morrissey and librettist Matt Copson. Last Days featured as part of the orchestra’s California Festival and presented as part of their Green Umbrella subscription series.


"Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare" from Oliver Leith and Matt Copson's opera, Last Days

To learn more about Oliver Leith, visit fabermusic.com.

Oliver Leith
Hallelujah amen (2023)
for mixed voices
10'

Last Days (2022)
an opera
text (Eng) by Matt Copson in collaboration with Oliver Leith
perc: glsp/tin whistle/steel drum/musical saw/mark tree/3 clusters of bottles/broken glass in hessian sack/4 ride cym/3 t.bells/timp/2 air raid sirens/plastic sheet/rain stick–sampler–pno–4 vn.2 va.2vc.cb
90'

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