Biennale College Musica - Jack Sheen

Croon harvest (1490-1562) centres on the voice’s potential to create incredible intimacy in its most hushed, unprojected state, a state within which blemishes, grain, and imperfections ornament the resulting sound.
The piece is made up of fragments of music by Adrian Willaert, deconstructed, blurred, bent out of shape, performed by Neuen Vocalsolisten in a way that is closer to humming or murmuring rather than singing in a projected manner. These are set alongside recordings taken from large, empty spaces around Venice and vocal sounds that echo these architectural reverberations, cycling around one another with only fleeting moments of unity.
In one sense, as an installation, Croon harvest (1490-1562) constructs an ecosystem out of haunted ruins: the misremembered, twisted debris of the Venetian choral school; the failed attempts to capture sound from vacant or abandoned areas of the city. It is an ecosystem rooted in reminders of the inevitable demise of our environment here in Venice.
Yet in another sense, the piece invites a celebration of intimacy, placing gentle vocal lamentations in dialogue with near-silence to create a gentle tapestry of ritualistic activity, soft mumbling, and white noise.