When the English vocal octet Voces8 first visited Minnesota in 2009 and '10, it arrived as an early music ensemble. Perhaps that was because it came courtesy of the Rose Ensemble, the since-disbanded specialists in vocal music old and European.
But Voces8 has seen its star rise, and not just because of what it can do with Renaissance polyphony. It also commissions new music, and has adopted the crowd-pleasing formula of fellow Englanders the King's Singers by throwing intriguing arrangements of contemporary pop and vintage jazz into their concerts.
All of the above was on the program Sunday afternoon when Voces8 offered an enjoyable and sometimes quite moving concert at a packed Bethlehem Lutheran Church in south Minneapolis.
Yes, there was ethereal and transporting music of the 1500s from Thomas Tallis and Tomas Luis de Victoria, as well as early-Baroque fare from Orlando Gibbons and Claudio Monteverdi.
But almost half of the program was by living composers, among them British folk-rockers Mumford & Sons and Kate Rusby. And then there was the jazz, with this ensemble of three women and five men doing its best imitation of the Swingle Singers or an expanded Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.
Voces8 may have come to us as specialists, but now they're a marvelously versatile group, singing everything with exquisite balance, blend and technique.
Tallis' "O Nata Lux" was heavenly enough to leave listeners feeling as if they were floating away on a cloud. Soprano Andrea Haines made it all the more beautiful with her soaring descant lines.
But the concert's peak may have come when they used not eight singers, but five. The six Monteverdi madrigals that opened the concert's second half proved a crucible of fiery passion, a deeply involving elegy to a beloved singer cut down at an early age.
