900 VOICES
Reviews
THE SCOTSMAN, Monday 5 August
900 Voices ****
“..it fills St Giles’ with voices, young and old, faltering and confident, joyful and melancholy, but all of them cunningly cast right across the building’s dozens of interior speakers.”
If you're looking for a little respite from the festival madness, you could do far worse than head for the cool interior of St Giles' Cathedral, transformed more overtly than ever into a space for contemplation and reflection by sonic installation 900 Voices. Conceived as part of the Cathedral's 900th anniversary celebrations - and created by composers Zoë Irvine and Jules Rawlinson with designer Lindsay Perth - it fills St Giles' with voices, young and old, faltering and confident, joyful and melancholy, but all of them cunningly cast right across the building's dozens of interior speakers. The result is sometimes a clamorous, bewildering cacophony, sometimes something far subtler and quieter, even occasionally silence. But 900 Voices' theme remains constant: ideas of community and belonging, as expressed by residents right across the city, and especially relevant at a time when Edinburgh becomes temporary home to thousands from across the world.
And although there's much to experiencing 900 Voices that offers a calming break from the festival hubbub happening just metres from St Giles' doors, it's far more than just an arty chill-out zone. For a start, computer processing means that the work never repeats: sit and listen, and you might hear it fade to silence and burst into life again as cycles end and begin, but they're never quite the same. There are wonderful subtleties, too, to the work's throwing of vowel sounds or mantra-like words - family, home, work - to all corners of the Cathedral, and occasionally voices slow to become musical tones, piling up in lavish harmonies. There's more than a flavour of early electronic pieces by Stockhausen or Jonathan Harvey to certain moments.
But the real success of 900 Voices lies in the richness of ideas and sonic textures it derives from its simple concept, and the community of listeners that the piece itself generates, while immersing them in Edinburgh residents' experiences of their city and each other. It's a revealing and at times deeply moving creation.
David Kettle
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900 VOICES at Edinburgh International Festival
10, 11, 19–21, 25 August
Book your slot: eif.co.uk/events/900-voices
Photo credit Peter Dibdin