Nicholas Forbes was in fine voice during Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir's Sonic Silos performance. Photo / Calvin Baker
This month, an enthusiastic town hall audience thrilled to the full glory of Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir sharing the stage with the visiting King's Singers.
Also part of the Auckland Arts Festival, nine of their number formed a singing circle in the northernmost of the city's six waterfront silos,
encouraging us to meditate with them through 500 years of sacred music in a new and seductive acoustic.
It worked brilliantly.
One could well imagine the music floating through a vaulted cathedral rather than the brutalist concrete walls around us, their visual severity admittedly tempered by a selection of jewel-like artworks by Peata Larkin.
The singers entered with Gregorian chant and, once in a circle, contrasted two simple hymns by Tallis and Rachmaninov, the latter stirring up a spectacular surge of sound. It was a privilege to be part of a choral experience on such an intimate scale, close enough to the singers to lean forward and identify score titles from their electronic tablets; close enough to identify individual vocal strands and occasional tremors.
