Entering a concert venue in the city usually features a lobby or foyer: a place that affords concert-goers a transitional decompression space. An extravagance? It can certainly feel that way in space-starved New York where every cubic foot is accounted for. Nevertheless, the pre-concert space is preserved as a borderline necessity; how else can busy urban-dwellers properly make the transition from the mortal realm to the creative divine? Well, that is unless the concert is being performed in the catacombs of Green-Wood cemetery. In that case, the audience is treated to entry through a gothic gate, spirits tasting in the cemetery’s reception room and a sunset wander through an accredited arboretum.

The time, design and effort spent on this transitional luxury is also thoroughly logical given the sounds made by Fourth Wall Ensemble are truly not-of-this-world (and certainly not of the metropolitan hubbub). The group’s creative intent is made clear from the opening improvisations on ‘Soar Away’, where stomps and top-line twangs create a through line from the European medieval to the North American work song via sea-shanty harmony. Having processed from the back of the catacomb’s long tunnel to the raised stage, they then deliver Byrd’s Agnus Dei lit by an eery yellow glow followed by Monteverdi’s Lagrime d’amante al sepolcro dell’amata where spooling ornaments treat the passageway’s audience (living and the dead) to vocal embellishment’s aplenty.

After applause for this opening portion has died down, conductor Christopher Allen turns to the appreciative crowd to make an artful thematic stitch which joins the repertoire of dead composers from 400 years ago to the contemporary (and very much alive) Caroline Shaw whose work is headlining the program. Their take on Shaw’s ‘And the Swallow’ moves with both pace and delicacy evocative of the text’s subject with a bass that is almost chunky, giving it all satisfying ballast. The touch that would be a dream-state requirement for all future performances is the actual birdsong that chirrups away audibly in hummed sections (Brooklyn’s birds did great by the way, absolutely nailing their cues). Then we arrive at the heavy-weight, Pulitzer-winning, throat-demanding splendor that is Partita For 8 Voices. Here, threads are joined from earlier in the evening with dance evocations nodding to the night’s opening stomps and harmonic echoes of the “where she” section of ‘And the Swallow’. Fourth Wall Ensemble also possess the valuable knack of actually enjoying themselves never more evident than in the “find a way back home” refrain where they seem to be having a tonne of fun (special mention for Paul An’s raised fist).

There’s a beautiful section in the piece’s Sarabande which requires singers to create sounds that sit somewhere between tuning a radio and/or edging towards a theremin. It is a moment to marvel at, almost akin to coming in and out of sonic consciousness. Despite the mastery needed to pull-off just this one moment (in a work of countless stamina-demanding moments) Christopher has assured those gathered in the crypt that Caroline describes Partita as ‘a simple piece’. And maybe it is. Much in the same way that the leafy, landscaped walk through a National Historic Landmark is Wood-Green’s ‘simple’ foyer. As long as the Angel’s Share series is serving these ‘simple’ pleasures, why would anyone go in search of anything more exotic?

Check out forthcoming concerts in The Angel’s Share series here and listen to Fourth Wall Ensemble here. (Photo credit Steve Pisano)