The King’s Singers Collaborate with Seán Curran Company in TRAVEL SONGS, 11/8

The unrivaled British a cappella vocal ensemble pays tribute to camaraderie across the ages in this charming afternoon delight. The concert will be held at the Wilkins Theatre, (Kean University, 1000 Morris Avenue, Union, NJ 07083) on Sunday, November 11, 2012, 3pm. Tickets $20 and $30. Tickets can be purchased by calling 908-737-7469 or by visiting http://www.keanstage.com/

The King’s Singers are one of the world’s most accomplished and popular vocal ensembles, with a musical range that crosses the boundaries of Early Music, modern compositions and pop — from Gibbons to Ligeti to Michael Bublé. Their discography comprises over 150 recordings, including their 2009 Grammy® award winning album Simple Gifts, and they have appeared in virtually every imaginable performing situation, virtually everywhere in the world, as well as on television and film. Now, after a long career of firsts, The King’s Singers are excited to announce a truly unique event, their collaboration in performance with the Seán Curran Company in a program entitled TRAVEL SONGS. In these concerts, The King’s Singers will sing established classics, newer works, and music specifically arranged for this project, including works from Schütz, Sibelius , Kodaly, Velio Tormis, Joby Talbot and Gabriela Lena Frank.

This ambitious collaboration is over a year in the making. Since June of 2011, The King’s Singers and the Seán Curran Company have been sharing creative ideas, carving out and rehearsing the program, which brings the Seán Curran Company to concert stages for the first time. The performances will add dynamism and pure physical excitement to the standard concert experience, and will also include a visual component created by visual designer Mark Randall, a combination film and set design that will define the space in which the singers and dancers will interact and accompany each other.

The Singers “have always been keen to explore possibilities with interesting collaborations, and willing to share a stage with other great artists,” explains Paul Phoenix, of one The Singers. “The collaboration and partnership with Seán Curran came about as a result of a desire to share both a rich vocal and visual texture with audiences. One of the aims of the project is to fully utilize the stage, with both dancers and singers sharing space, interacting with and juxtaposing one another. Seán, like The Kings’ Singers, sees a concert as an opportunity to express a whole range of emotion, and the prospect of doing this through the live performance of both music and dance is something we relish.”

Seán Curran is a highly praised performer and choreographer: The Los Angeles Times say of his work: “There's no fresher, more invigorating new American dance now than the choreography of Seán Curran, an artist with a background in Irish step dance, postmodern experiment and Broadway hoofing--but no clear allegiance to anything but his restless imagination.” Founded in 1997, his company is known for their leader’s combination of wit, intelligence and ingenuity. The company has been commissioned by multiple performing arts organizations, including The Joyce Theater, Symphony Space, the 92Y Harkness Dance Project, Central Park Summerstage and Celebrate Brooklyn. They have toured extensively in the United States and Europe, and been awarded grants by, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. In the spring of 2012, the company performed in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic and Turkmenistan as part of the U.S. Department of State’s DanceMotion USA initiative.

Curran has previously created dance for new music, such as Charles Wourinen’s Mission of Virgil, and now brings his skills and experience to the world-class vocal artistry of The King’s Singers. For Travel Songs — the title of the program comes from Frank’s “Travel Songs,” a piece from her Tres Mitos de Mi Tierra, and the song that opens the program - the Company will dance, alone, to a work by Handel. To create the overall program, the two ensembles have worked to put together music and movement for Sibelius’ Rakastava, Scenes in America Deserta by composer John McCabe, and a central work, Léon, from Joby Talbot, which has been arranged by former King’s Singers member Phillip Lawson. Curran says of the program: “Music - particularly vocal music - has always inspired and informed my choreography. The opportunity to collaborate with these world-class singers and create a cohesive evening of movement and music has challenged me to approach my choreography in a fresh way, which I have found quite fulfilling.”

Sibelius’s piece is a three movement vocal work, based on lyrical poems for them traditional Finnish Kanteletar, with a folk flavor that is a natural for dance. That, and the familiar music from Handel and Janacek stir interest for the newest works. McCabe’s piece is a commission from The King’s Singers, the words are from a book of the same title by Reyner Benham. The music and dance convey powerful, sensual impressions of the desert, the heat, the light, the stillness, the shimmering air. There is, perhaps, a contemplative path between that and Léon, which Lawson has adapted from Talbot’s large-scale work, Path of Miracles. This movement, named after the Cathedral Leon, one of the touchstones of the historically rich Catholic pilgrimage of the Camino Frances, is described by the composer as a “Lux Aeterna.” It is music about the sun with Medieval routes, an exploration of internal light, a depiction of a spiritual journey from minor to major keys, a setting for the expressive emotional and physical transformations that dance and music can express together in a way no other arts, and forms, can.

A cappella, The King’s Singers will open and close the concerts with Frank’s dancelike, myth-based songs, sing Schütz’s madrigals to spring, and contemplative and lyrical music from Kodaly and Tormis, Norvég leányok and Esti dal from the former, Ratas (The Wheel of Life) from the latter. The themes behind all this music — storytelling, observations of changes in nature and in one’s soul, journeys of the body and mind - come together in sound and sight. The simple pleasures of melody and counterpoint mark basic trips from one moment in time to the next, the soulful expressions of journeys from darkness to light, from one internal vista to the next, convey a deeper experience. To this fundamental power of music, add visual design, and the beauty and expressive force of the Seán Curran Company’s bodies moving through space in time, reacting to and acting with music, and songs and music about travel become TRAVEL SONGS, an utterly special concert experience.

TRAVEL SONGS was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.