Voice is a female a cappella trio from the U.K. that performs music from Hildegard of Bingen to works by present-day composers, some of which the group has commissioned. Voice has collaborated with a variety of other artists in innovative programming.
Voice was founded in 2006 by Victoria Couper, Emily Burn, and Clemmie Franks. The three women had been choirmates in the Oxford Girls' Choir under conductor Richard Vendome and had known each other since they were 12. In that choir, they were exposed to the music of Hildegard, who became central to their later repertory. The women attended separate universities but stayed in touch, and after completing their studies, they all launched individual careers (which continue) and converged on London, where they reconnected and decided to get together to sing for the fun of it. From these sessions grew their interest in performing together. In addition to founding Voice, they all sang, and continue to sing, in the vocal group Sinfonye, whose director, Stevie Wishart, cultivated the mixture of medieval and medieval-inspired music that they have performed as a trio.
Attracting support from various funding agencies, including the British Council, Voice has appeared across the U.K., the U.S. (where the group has toured three times), and continental Europe. Voice made its recording debut in 2013 with the album Musical Harmony, following it up two years later with Patterns of Love, which featured newly commissioned works from four female British composers. The group has performed at major festivals, including the West Cork Chamber Music Festival (from 2016 to 2018), the inaugural Finding A Voice Festival, and the Three Choirs Festival (2017), where Voice premiered a new work for voices and cello by Roderick Williams. A notable feature of Voice's performing career has been its collaborations with other artists, including the Dufay Collective, with which it recorded the album I Have Set My Hert So Hy in 2015, and, in the U.S., with cellist Matt Haimovitz. The trio often performs an early music program called "A Life of Love and Joy," but its repertory is diverse, and in 2019, it joined tenor Nicky Spence on a Hyperion-label recording of Leoš Janáček's Diary of One Who Disappeared. Voice returned in 2022 on the Somm label with the album Hildegard Portraits.
