Today’s video premiere features Roomful of Teeth and songwriter/producer Alev Lenz performing “The Chair” from Lenz’s forthcoming album 3.
You might recognize the voice of Alev Lenz from her contributions to popular TV soundtracks such as Black Mirror (with her track “Fall Into Me”) and the Netflix series DARK (with her latest single “May the Angels”). With her full-length album 3, Lenz offers a new collection of twelve largely acapella songs.
Here’s what Alev had to say about “The Chair:”
This song is heavily inspired by the text “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” by Audre Lorde, which resonates deeply with me. At the live premier performance at the Ecstatic Festival with Brooklyn Youth Chorus in New York earlier this year, I was asked if this song is a break up song, and I liked what I realised then–it is, but it is in a sense that it is a break up song with a system, with a specific dynamic. A destructive dynamic for all of us; it was truly special to sing this message out loud with a youth chorus.
3 is out September 27, 2019 on SA Recordings, but you can pre-order the album here.
About Alev Lenz
Born and raised between orient and occident, Alev Lenz is the daughter of a Turkish artist and a German businessman. As a songwriter, composer and singer, Lenz’s rich catalogue of compositions fuse distinctive musical worlds into something that is authentically hers. Her honest lyrics, instinct for melodic hooks and intriguing harmonics form deep and compelling songs that hold their own on both record and screen. As an artist, Alev Lenz has always danced to her own rhythm. Her incredibly rich experience as a female composer alongside the demands that came with becoming a new mother led Alev to hone in on the most important elements of her craft – ’The limitations that came with motherhood clearly showed me what to let go of and what to hold on to for dear life. I boiled it down to what the core of me is – my voice and my writing.’ These two elements form the back bone of 3 – an intimate and powerful, self-produced collection of almost entirely acapella songs.
While working on material for her forthcoming third LP, Alev Lenz sang and co-wrote the title track of Anoushka Shankar’s Grammy-nominated album Land of Gold, as well as composing her breakthrough track “Fall Into Me” for Charlie Brooker’s Netflix series “Black Mirror.” Since “Fall Into Me,” her voice and writing have been in steady demand. Alev is currently working on her debut feature film score, a commissioned piece for Brooklyn Youth Chorus, as well as writing for Anoushka Shankar´s upcoming album. Her latest single “May The Angels” found placement in the forthcoming Netflix series “DARK” Season 2.
About Roomful of Teeth
Roomful of Teeth is a GRAMMY-winning vocal project dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice. Through study with masters from vocal traditions the world over, the eight-voice ensemble continually expands its vocabulary of singing techniques and, through an ongoing commissioning process, forges a new repertoire without borders.
Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells, Roomful of Teeth gathers annually at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts, where they’ve studied with some of the world’s top performers and teachers in Tuvan throat singing, yodeling, Broadway belting, Inuit throat singing, Korean P’ansori, Georgian singing, Sardinian cantu a tenore, Hindustani music, Persian classical singing and Death Metal singing. Commissioned composers include Rinde Eckert, Fred Hersch, Merrill Garbus (of tUnE-yArDs), William Brittelle, Toby Twining, Missy Mazzoli, Julia Wolfe, Ted Hearne and Ambrose Akinmusire, among many others.
