The Voice Project Choir will perform a new show around Antony Gormley’s installation

June 25, 2024

The groundbreaking Voice Project Choir has announced its new event The Lie of The Land, which will see the combined voices of the community-based, open-access ensemble create a promenade choir theatre show around Antony Gormley’s installation Time Horizon at Houghton Hall on 13 and 14 July.

The Lie of the Land will feature original music by Jonathan Baker, Sian Croose and Orlando Gough, inspired by and responding to Gormley’s extraordinary work. Some of the piece’s lyrics are taken from Daisy Hildyard’s essay that accompanies the exhibition, which charts the journey of the Houghton landscape from its formation and development in the Ice Age, through its human settlement, to the building of the Hall and the themes of Time Horizon itself. It details the relationship of the human body to the landscape, past, present and future.

In addition to the choir, the soloists of the Voice Project, Jeremy Avis, Lisa Cassidy, Sharon Durant and the instrumentalist Adrian Lever will perform.

This is the first time Time Horizon has been on show in the UK, featuring 100 life-size sculptures. Each sculpture weighs 620kg and has an average height of 191cm. They are set at the same height to form a single horizontal plane in the landscape. Some figures are fully or partially buried, so that only part of the head is visible, while others are buried up to the chest or knees, depending on the topography. Only occasionally do they stand on the existing surface. Around a quarter of the works stand on concrete columns, which vary in height from a few centimetres to four metres above the ground.

Sian Croose, co-director of the Voice Project, said: “Antony Gormley refers to Time Horizon as ‘a field’ and similarly the choir is a field. In a way, we are an ‘instrument’ rather than individuals when we sing as part of a choir. We will create a piece that uses the stillness of the sculptures and the movement of the singers, playing with the networks and patterns we can create with music and over 100 breathing, moving bodies.”

Co-director Jonathan Baker added: “It is very exciting to return to Houghton Hall and interact with Antony Gormley’s inspiring installation in the landscape. It invites reflection on the past and the changes the land has undergone throughout history – themes we are keen to explore in the music.”

Composer Orlando Gough said: “We feel deeply privileged to create an event that interacts with Houghton Hall’s extraordinarily beautiful parkland, its vibrant wildlife and Antony Gormley’s powerful, thought-provoking installation Time Horizon. What a wonderful opportunity: over a hundred people singing in a landscape, pondering questions of evolution, nature and control, history and nostalgia. What will the deer think?”

Although the choir is primarily based in Norfolk, following the success at the Brighton Festival, a parallel Voice Project Choir was formed in Sussex. Singers from this group, as well as online participants from across the UK, Spain and Ireland, will take part in the final rehearsals and performances.

The Voice Project was founded in 2008 to create challenging, engaging and innovative performance pieces for large, open-access community choirs. Working with brilliant creative artists and professional performers, each project is inspired by a big idea, an inspiring venue or the work of an outstanding artist and this year’s Voice Project has all three ingredients!

The choir is part of the larger Voice Project, a non-profit music education organization that runs projects throughout the year, including workshops on a range of singing styles, traditions and approaches, daily warm-ups and classes in spoken voice and music and mindfulness, and training for professional arts educators and artists.