Throat Tickles in Brighton 1

Earlier in the year, I went to Brighton to experience a little bit of its annual festival! I was keen to visit The Basement which described as ‘the region’s leading purveyor of innovative and experimental performance’ (The basement) was pretty high on my grabbing horns project’s hit-list of go/see places.

But first stop was an art gallery near the sea front called Fabrica, where Janet Cardiff’s 40-part motet was being exhibited. Fabrica was once a Church however it is described as being ‘unconverted’ and has preserved it’s architectural features. The open exhibition space is visually spectacular as the church was a regency kind (built during the same period as the Brighton Pavilion). It now runs as an art gallery for artists to make new work.

The 40-part motet could be heard faintly as you approach the building. Entering the space, it occupies the church setting very naturally. The ensemble singing voices melodically resonate familiar choir music. It is striking that the singers sound very much like they are in the room, when they are clearly not. My eyes were tricking my ears.

What you see are 40 speakers and what you hear are 40 human voices. They stand in groups of five forming a circle and facing in, engulfing the audience whom come and go but mostly seem to hover in the middle. Like any choir, there are moments of fewer voices: just the females, the males and then a lonely solo. My head turned as I tried to track the speaker who was speaking. They stand at their full height, roughly the same as an adult person and take on a human quality. Symmetrically laid out, all in black, they have showmanship. I felt moved to clap and it’s not because there’s an inevitable spiritual element (due to the site) – rather that it feels live.



At the end when the singing stopped, some audience members got up and I was going to do the same so I could listen to it again from a different part of the building, when suddenly I was sure I heard a Speaker cough. Walking closer to the speaker, I heard it again, a definite tickle in the back of the throat.

It was then that I noticed the background noise was proportionately louder than the number of audience members in the room. There was an additional ambience, quite a number of whispers, coughs, laughter and even pages turning.

I went up to another speaker and heard a male voice saying ‘superb organist’, another one ‘unless there’s a calamity’, a female ‘only half a copy’ another ‘you don’t want your alarm to go off’ and another ‘scariest log-ride in the world’.

It was wonderful to be privy to the kind of chitchat that usually happens out of audience earshot. Then they all took a breath, the singing started again and I found it to be quite breathtaking.