Elevator Songs is a celebration of the individual voices that comprise Roomful of Teeth. While the ensemble is widely known for its incredible stylistic flexibility and use of extended vocal techniques, I learned over the course of several workshop sessions with the group at MASS MoCA in 2022 that they are all, unsurprisingly, wonderful singers of tunes. Given my background as a singer-songwriter, it felt natural to use this project as an opportunity to create, in essence, a “Roomful of Teeth Songbook,” an anthology to showcase each voice within the context of a larger work. What you will hear tonight grew out of the first movement, written as a sketch during that aforementioned visit to MASS MoCA last summer. Elevator Songs is dedicated, with love and admiration, to Roomful of Teeth.

Prologue: Speaking in Tongues
To be honest, this hotel is kind of creepy
The ice machine is speaking in tongues
Aggressively cheerful cooking shows haunt the tv
We can’t find sleep in this iron lung
And the woman next door, she is in mourning
And the couple upstairs, well, good for them
We shuffle onto the window, storm clouds are forming
And the streets are filled with wild-eyed men
They are longing for some familiar city
Toronto, Milwaukee, LA
But the weatherman he is whispering a certain elegy
You won’t be traveling today…

Text by the composer