Listening to Lassus

Can music from 500 years ago ever be relevant? 
Should we speak words from the past or our own? 
What is the best way to ‘listen’ to each other?

Musician and actor Aminita Francis, documentary theatre-maker Miriam Sherwood and eight singers from Echo collaborate in order to ask questions of the classical music industry and discover the power of communal singing. 

‘Listening to Lassus’ is a music-theatre performance that features 16th century choral performance alongside spoken word and improvisation, taking the music of composer Orlande de Lassus as its starting point in an exploration of the act of listening and singing together. 

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The 16th century composer Orlande de Lassus is remarkable for a number of reasons: he wrote over 2,000 works in his lifetime; a ridiculously prodigious work rate. He was very widely travelled, and spent time in England, Italy and Germany, alongside his Franco-Flemish roots. This meant that he wrote in all of the most famous secular and sacred vocal genres of the time; the Italian madrigal, the French chanson, the German lied and a huge number of motets and masses. Despite being exposed to instrumental music from a young age, he chose to only write in vocal genres throughout his life, and his music spans the gamut from outrageously bawdy secular texts to sublime religious text settings. 


When Lassus was 20  he moved to Rome, where he lived for four years. In the 1550s, various genres of Italian music thrived in salons where groups of writers, poets and composers met to discuss each other's works and circulate them before being printed.



The salons acted as host to a kind of 'group improvisation', where writers and composers were both readers and producers simultaneously. Taking inspiration from this way of working, our Listening to Lassus piece involves live improvisation, in the room, not only from the singers but from our collaborators and audiences.



COLLABORATORS


Aminita Francis is an actor-devisor and vocal artist whose practise revolves around using the human voice to tell stories. She specialises in song, beatboxing, spoken word, rap, live looping and vocal processing, and she plans to work with the singers to encourage them to use the full capabilities of the human voice in rehearsal and performance, alongside devising improvisations as a group. 



FIND OUT MORE


Miriam Sherwood's work combines a type of very creative documentary style theatre drawing on social history, and an informal presenting style that blurs the line between performance and presentation. 


ECHO INTERACTIVE
Join us for virtual workshops related to the Listening to Lassus programme

Conductor Sarah Latto leads an online singing session in which she will teach you Lassus' 'Matona Mia Cara' and develop some skills to improvise around it, alongside the Echo singers.


No sheet music or prior singing experience needed!


This event has now premiered; take part by playing the video below:


Vocal artist Aminita Francis leads a virtual Circle Jam that you can take part in from the comfort of your own home. 

Aminita is a specialist in devised improvisation as a group and will lead us step by step in a technique to allow anyone (no singing experience required) to improvise vocally within an ensemble. 

This event has now premiered; take part by playing the video below: 
Experience a streamed meditation and listening session, exploring meditation and its effect on music. 

Join the singers from Echo and conductor Sarah Latto and discover the effects of breath work and moving meditation on your experience of singing and listening.

This event has now premiered; take part by playing the video below: 

We need YOU!


We would love YOUR help with our research. We're hoping to find out about your listening tastes, your most memorable musical moments, and what kinds of things you listen to on a day to day basis (birdsong, traffic and children all included!).


We're also hoping to play you some snippets of music to gauge your initial reactions. If you're interested in getting involved, please get in touch - it will involve you having headphones, a computer, an internet connection and 10 minutes to spare.