Homeby Barb Jungr
Jenni Roditi's recent Lontano-commissioned Music Theatre Opera Siddhartha has premiered in its full length form in London's Ocean Centre to reviews which reflect the pieces, and Roditi's, attempts to break musical barriers, expanding the notion of what classical composition can achieve when combined with vision, the influences of other cultures and liberated vocal technique: voices that encourage the emotional and musical range of the singer beyond classical convention. With the voice of Sianed Jones (who has picked up vocal influences from Kenya, Madagascar, Mongolia and Kazakhstan) in the dual lead roles of the Spirit Child and Siddhartha, in contrast with the classical sound of the Lontano string chamber orchestra, the use of Mantra and the incorporation of the other worldly sound of the Duduk, an Armenian flute, Roditi aims her work at the centre of the being of the listener, a fuller experience than the solely cerebral.
The Mantras serve to quiet the mind and open the heart when the narrative action is suspended. The whole encompassing not simply the stories of the Spirit Child and Siddhartha, but also bringing to the audience some of the sense of the spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism. A reviewer found the work weaving "the Indian raga and flamenco influenced music into textures of silk and velvet."
I spoke to Roditi during the writing of the piece some months previously, and she told me " I feel that the piece I am writing is emotional, it's harmonically direct, but it's a non-functional tonal harmony, which I hope is fresh. It probably wouldn't fit into the class of a commercial musical, but it might not be accepted by the establishment as an opera, so I decided to call it Music Theatre Opera instead".
Siddhartha is the result of a collaboration with writer Rebecca M. Swift, and was first performed in St John's Smith Square as a 20 minute prelude. The Music Theatre Opera is a much expanded development of this. The whole project was inspired by a BBC documentary about the abduction by the Chinese authorities of the 11th Panchen Lama of Tibet. Tibetan Buddhism is a bedrock of Roditi's work. " I am following the practises of Tibetan Buddhism as a spiritual path and this is inspiring me to make my whole life as much as I can involved with the Dharma (the Buddhist teachings) and because I am a composer this is the way I am choosing to do it at the moment, through my music".
Roditi's work has increasingly explored the expansion of vocal boundaries and Inanna (1992), her first Music Theatre Opera, used five singers as well as Roditi herself. Their respective backgrounds spanned rock, classical, jazz, folk, world music and West End musical. This kind of exploration makes new demands on the singers. As Roditi says, "Fiona Baines really broke some boundaries because in the part of Ereshkigal she's the dark sister and has a song in which she has to move away from normal singing into what I'd call 'physical vocal theatre' which is very much inspired by my study of the Roy Hart style of voice work as a vehicle for the expression of raw emotion".
It is Roditi's extrordinary development as a singer, composer and person that makes her work so exciting for vocalists and musicians. Aged six she began writing music and continued writing songs on piano and guitar before training as a composer at the Guildhall. She went on to teach creative workshops in music education while continuing to compose, until she suffered a composers block just after finishing a large commission for the Schoenberg Symphony Orchestra. This prompted a reappraisal resulting in a year of travelling to and from Paris to train with Boris Moore of the Roy Hart Theatre. "I hadn't been singing at all since I joined The Guildhall and I suddenly realised I had to get back in touch with my voice and during that year I explored my creativity in a most thorough and challenging way. Much more important in a way than studying composition because this was the stuff that got you in touch with what you wanted to say rather than how you were going to say it". The work with Boris Moore changed her life. "You are fully engaged physically, emotionally, vocally, psychologically and spiritually", she said of his teaching. Following her work with Moore she began working with Paul Newham in Voice Movement Therapy where she continued to develop her own voice and compositional ideas. Her teaching and voice practise evolved, whilst Jenni continued composing.
"The voice is a mirror of the psyche, if you know how to listen to it and you engage in a vocal process that opens the voice right out, there is an opportunity to hear the multiplicity of the voice which, when true to self, resonates internally with the psyche. When that resonance occurs the client 'wakes up'. This is almost always a healing experience. We are talking of a voice that can awaken to its true nature, and thus its freedom, something that for me goes beyond 'style'". Her work with clients has prevented her from being "locked away in the world of CDs and concerts", and has kept her ears finely tuned to the many personal vocal worlds of her clients through the intimate experiences of voice therapy, work she now calls "Authentic Voice Process".
The combination of a broad musical training, spiritual devotion and psychology has and does make Roditi's work quite unique. Her individual vocal development has altered her compositional technique, moving her from the purely cerebral days of the The Guildhall to active vocal creation. "I have to sing my lines, I have to dance my lines. This alters the music. Some people may say it lacks because if you make someting too natural then you make it too obvious, and theres a fine line there, but I am interested in simplicity as a path to awakening. Why do you have to make someting too complicated?" Roditi finished composing another piece which featured voices in 1998 - a 14 minute BBC2 film SOS (Songs of Seduction) . This was a collaboration between her, director Jane Thorburn and acclaimed writer Peter Blegvad. The score featured gospel and soul singing fin men (half men, half dolphins) with Sianed Jones and Mike Henry, a singer who moves easily from "Mozart to the Flying Pickets" and of whom Roditi says "his voice is its own thing". Something that perhaps can also be said of Roditi herself. Her work is integral to her self development and it takes vocal composition further. Out where the dolphins are singing.
Barb Jungr is a journalist for various music publications, including The Singer.
Photograph by Stephanie de Leng
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