Roomful of Teeth

Formed in 2009 in Massachusetts under Brad Wells, the eight-voice ensemble Roomful of Teeth concentrates on new music that fuses classical traditions with global and popular idioms through highly virtuosic technique. Their debut recording, issued in 2012 on New Amsterdam Records, earned the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance; one of its highlights, Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices, subsequently received the Pulitzer Prize in Music and became emblematic of the group’s repertory. Still active in 2020, the octet presented two albums devoted to music by Wally Gunn and Michael Harrison. Three years later they issued Rough Magic, containing new pieces by Shaw, William Brittelle, Eve Beglarian, and Peter S. Shin, and simultaneously released Stillpoint, a project uniting the singers with pianist Awadagin Pratt and string ensemble A Far Cry.

The original roster comprised Cameron Beauchamp, Dashon Burton, Martha Cluver, Eric Dudley, Esteli Gomez, Avery Griffin, Caroline Shaw, and Virginia Warnken; the name itself derives from a line spoken in the Bing Crosby–Bob Hope film Road to Morocco, reflecting the members’ playful outlook. Their self-titled first album incorporated an array of extended techniques, among them distortion and overtone singing, and featured two compositions by Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, with whom the group has also appeared in concert. Shaw’s Partita secured her the 2013 Pulitzer, while the album itself captured the 2014 Grammy for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.

Render, their second album, appeared in spring 2015 and contained contributions from the singers themselves as well as Brittelle, Caleb Burhans, Gunn, and Missy Mazzoli. The following year the ensemble joined Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and Kronos Quartet cellist Jeffrey Ziegler on the National Sawdust soundtrack for the documentary The Colorado. In 2017 they recorded Dudley’s arrangement of “How a Rose,” based on Praetorius’s 1609 chorale “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen.” A Seattle Symphony account of Berio’s Sinfonia for Eight Voices and Orchestra, featuring the octet, followed in 2018.

Two further New Amsterdam releases arrived in August 2020: Wally Gunn: The Ascendant and Michael Harrison: Just Constellations. By then Thann Scoggin had assumed Griffin’s place in the core lineup, although Griffin continued to perform occasionally as an auxiliary singer. In mid-2021 the live album Fall Into Me (Live at the TANK) documented the group’s account of Alev Lenz’s title work inside a seven-story steel water tank in Rangely, Colorado. Both Rough Magic and Stillpoint appeared on New Amsterdam in 2023, the latter pairing the vocalists with Pratt and A Far Cry in works by six contemporary composers.