Walking Still

The Vocal Constructivists roar, whoop, snap, and flutter their way into the experimental music world with their debut album, Walking Still. Formed in 2011, the group has brought the exuberance and playfulness of experimental music to live audiences in England and America with their sung interpretations of graphic and text scores. Ranging in age from 18 to 72, members come from a variety of musical backgrounds and draw on classical, global, avant-garde, and performance art traditions. All musical decisions are made by members of the group, worked out in collaboration.

Walking Still juxtaposes British and American composers from three different generations (born in the 1930s, 1950s/60s, and the 1980s). It offers the first choral recording of Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise (1964­–67). The Vocal Constructivists’ passionate and imaginative rendering demonstrates the flexibility of this most iconic of graphic scores.

Only one work on the album has been previously recorded: Pauline Oliveros’ Sound Patterns, in 1967. Ronald Kuivila’s A City of No Allusions (2012) and Michael Parsons’ Nevrazumitelny (2013) were written for the Vocal Constructivists, while Mark Applebaum’s Medium (2008) and Lauren Redhead’s concerto (2011) are both notated for any instrumentation.

The Vocal Constructivists liberate experimental music from the strait-jacket of an expected sound world. Their inventive realisations make open scores accessible to established and new audiences alike. Their sound palette ranges from the English choral tradition to the extended vocal techniques of European modernism, John Cage, and the Scratch Orchestra. The familiar is reimagined and the unfamiliar given a framework for comprehension.