They are one of the finest vocal ensembles in the world but their founding was almost by accident.

The Grammy-nominated British vocal ensemble VOCES8 performs with Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO) on June 8 and 9 in a concert entitled The Lost Birds. The group’s artistic director Barnaby Smith shares the group’s accidental, incidental beginning.

“We were invited to take part in a choral competition in Italy, which we’d never heard of,” Smith says.

“And when we got there, it turned out it was a really big deal. So we quickly did some practice and actually won that competition. And that meant that people were interested in us and that started us on our journey.”

That was in 2005 and within three years, VOCES8 had become a full-time gig. Smith, his brother Paul, and six friends formed the original octet, which has been evolving ever since. In addition to his directing duties, Smith also contributes as a countertenor.

Last year VOCES8 received their first Grammy nomination courtesy of The Lost Birds, their collaboration with composer Christopher Tin. It is this work that brings them to Brisbane later this month, to perform two concerts with the QSO.

The Lost Birds was a happy COVID experiment. Tin had written music for an earlier documentary tracing the extinction stories of five prominent avian species. As is often the case with soundtracks, a significant amount of the original music was not used in the edited film. During the pandemic, Tin reached out to VOCES8 to create some new choral “sketches” to expand the work, and eventually stitched together 12 movements.

Set to timeless texts by Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, and Christina Rossetti, Smith says The Lost Birds is both haunting and hopeful.

“Christopher Tin talks about it in two halves,” Smith says. “The first half of the piece is about celebrating avian life, and how wonderful birds are. The second half moves much more into the side of the elegy – mourning the loss of birds. But it does finish with the song Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, so there is hope that we as a race can turn around what we’re doing to the world.”

Rounding out their QSO program is Vaughan Williams’s much-loved The Lark Ascending (with vocals arranged by Smith and Paul Drayton), and Caroline Shaw’s and the swallow, a setting of psalm 84. Both of these pieces will feature violinist Jack Liebeck who is artistic director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville.

VOCES8 is renowned for acapella work (singing without musical accompaniment), but the scale of performing with an orchestra presents its own opportunities and challenges.

“What an orchestra has is an amazingly broad colour palette and huge power,” Smith says. “So, there’s a technical difficulty fitting eight voices on top of something that’s so much bigger.

“When we sing as an acapella group, especially when we go into a hall like QPAC, we’d be creating a sound on stage and almost inviting the audience to come to us and listen. When working with an orchestra you have the possibility to really fill the hall with sound.”

VOCES8 stand out for the exceptional clarity and tonal qualities of their singing, and an exquisite vocal blend. Their most popular video on YouTube – an arrangement of Enya’s May It Be from The Lord of the Rings – has had five million views and counting.

When asked to share the secrets of VOCES8’s success, Smith offers a highly technical explanation of how their hallmark sound has been developed over many years.

“Essentially, we use the outside of the vocal folds as much as possible,” he explains. “What we’re doing is going towards the edge of the vocal folds and then specifically resonating up the pharynx up into the soft palate, and it creates a sort of halo on the sound.”

The control of breath and vibrato is key. According to Smith, this “modus operandi” requires many hours of rehearsal to master, and core muscles of steel.

“When people join the group, the two hardest things for them to learn are that specific sound and controlling it. Most singers can do it for three minutes, but do it for a six-hour recording session or do it for 10 pieces in a concert is difficult.”

Local singers who are up for the challenge can experience the VOCES8 method at a special choral workshop, which takes place on the Monday following the weekend concerts.

VOCES8 and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra will perform The Lost Birds at the Concert Hall, QPAC on June 8 and 9. The choral workshop will be held on June 10 at the QSO Studio in South Bank.

qpac.com.au