Rebekka Karijord - The Bell Tower (feat. Roomful of Teeth) (2025) Hi-Res

Formed in Massachusetts in 2009 under the direction of Brad Wells, a cappella octet Roomful of Teeth specialize in contemporary compositions that bridge classical, world music, and pop at their most virtuosic. Their first album, Roomful of Teeth, saw release in 2012 and won a Grammy for best small ensemble performance. Included on that album was member Caroline Shaw's Partita for 8 Voices, which later won a Pulitzer Prize and went on to become a signature work for the group. Still going strong in 2020, they issued albums featuring the works of composers Wally Gunn and Michael Harrison. Shaw, William Brittelle, and Peter S. Shin were among the composers represented on 2023's Rough Magic, the same year Roomful of Teeth released Stillpoint, a collaboration with pianist Awadagin Pratt and string ensemble A Far Cry.

With a founding membership of Cameron Beauchamp, Dashon Burton, Martha Cluver, Eric Dudley, Esteli Gomez, Avery Griffin, Caroline Shaw, and Virginia Warnken, Roomful of Teeth's name was taken from a line in the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby film Road to Morocco, indicative of the group's free-spiritedness. Their self-titled debut album, which employed elements as diverse as (but not limited to) distortion and overtone singing, arrived on New Amsterdam Records in late 2012. It featured two works by indie rock's Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs), with whom they have performed live, and Shaw's Partita for 8 Voices, which won her a Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2013. The album went on to win a Grammy for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance in 2014.

The group's sophomore album, Render, followed in the spring of 2015 and featured works by members as well as William Brittelle, Caleb Burhans, Wally Gunn, and Missy Mazzoli. They then appeared alongside Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and Kronos Quartet cellist Jeffrey Ziegler on the soundtrack to the documentary The Colorado, which came out on the National Sawdust label in 2016. A year later, Roomful of Teeth released their performance of "How a Rose," a piece arranged by Dudley after the 1609 setting of Praetorius' "Es Ist ein Ros Entsprungen." They were featured on a Seattle Symphony recording of Berio's Sinfonia for Eight Voices and Orchestra in 2018.

The group returned in 2020 with a pair of albums on New Amsterdam. Wally Gunn: The Ascendant and Michael Harrison: Just Constellations were both issued that August. By that time, touring member Thann Scoggin had replaced Griffin in the ensemble's core lineup, though Griffin still performed with the group as an auxiliary member. In mid-2021, Fall Into Me (Live at the TANK) captured a Roomful of Teeth performance of the titular Alev Lenz work in a seven-story steel water tank in Rangely, Colorado. The group released two albums on New Amsterdam in 2023: Rough Magic, which premiered works written for the vocalists by Shaw, William Brittelle, Eve Beglarian, and Peter S. Shin, and Stillpoint, which found the group collaborating with pianist Awadagin Pratt and the string ensemble A Far Cry on works by six different contemporary composers.

From early on in her artistic journey, acclaimed composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Rebekka Karijord has been fascinated by the human voice. Known for her sweeping film scores (like for the Hulu Greta Thunberg documentary I Am Greta) as well as her work with artist Jessica Dessner and The National’s Bryce and Aaron Dessner in the group Complete Mountain Almanac, she brings a unique musical perspective and skillset to every one of her projects. The Bell Tower, her seventh solo album and one of her most ambitious records to date, is many things at once: it’s an ode to our planet in peril; it’s a missive from a mother to her children; it’s a meditation on humanity and our place within the natural world. On top of that, it’s also an experiment, something that evolved from an idea into an innovative and all-encompassing work that touches upon 19th-century poetry, environmental activism, and the cross-section of digital and organic instrumentation.