American Composers Orchestra

Theatre of Voices stands among the most respected and adaptable vocal groups to emerge toward the close of the twentieth century. Paul Hillier, who established the ensemble and serves as its artistic director, has guided performances spanning Medieval chant, Renaissance pieces by Lassus and Tallis, familiar Christmas carols, and twentieth-century compositions from Pärt and Cage. The majority of its recordings have appeared on the Harmonia Mundi and Dacapo imprints, while membership has fluctuated between a single singer and nearly two dozen across its lifespan.

Its inaugural official program took place in June 1992 at the Berkeley Early Music Festival. Hillier had already staged modern-music concerts in 1989 under the Theatre of Voices banner while still leading his earlier vocal ensemble, the Hilliard Ensemble. The project that evolved into the present group originated in 1990 after Hillier accepted a faculty post at the University of California; its formal identity crystallized only with the 1992 debut. The ensemble later transferred its operations to Bloomington, Indiana, coinciding with Hillier’s appointment to the faculty of Indiana University School of Music’s Early Music Institute. Hillier’s relocation to Copenhagen in 2003 prompted the group to broaden its international scope as well.

The ensemble’s debut release, William Byrd: Motets & Mass for Four Voices, appeared in 1994 on Harmonia Mundi. By that time a full touring calendar had developed, leading over the ensuing decade to engagements at major halls across the Americas and Europe, among them venues in New York, Paris, and Berlin. Broadcasts included a six-part national radio series, Millennium of Music, and an appearance on St. Paul Sunday Morning. In 1997 Oxford University Press issued Hillier’s monograph Arvo Pärt. That same year Theatre of Voices recorded Pärt’s sacred music for Harmonia Mundi under the title De Profundis, which reached Billboard’s Top Ten. A further well-received collection of the composer’s works, I Am the True Vine, followed on the same label in 2000.

Activity has persisted throughout the present century in both live performance and recorded media. The 2006 itinerary featured a United Kingdom tour and a presentation at Norway’s ILIOS Festival that included Stockhausen’s Stimmung. Also in 2006 the group issued Cantigas on Harmonia Mundi. Its world-premiere recording of David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Little Match Girl Passion received the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Ongoing collaborations have involved Kaija Saariaho, John Luther Adams, Michael Gordon, and numerous additional composers. In 2019 Theatre of Voices gave the premiere of Gordon’s choral work A Western. The ensemble appeared again in 2022 on the Deutsche Grammophon album Jóhann Jóhannsson: Drone Mass alongside the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME).