Q&A with Luisa Gerstein

Collaboration is at the heart of the Roberts Institute of Art. As we continue to learn about what collaboration can be, we have asked a variety of cultural practitioners to discuss the way they live and work with others.

This week we ask Luisa Gerstein — who set up the all-female singing collective, Deep Throat Choir — about the power of singing and community.

How did Deep Throat Choir come together and how does it operate?

The choir started in 2013, at a time when I was looking for community in music and wanting to explore arrangements just for voices. I participated in a lot of group singing when I was growing up and missed the visceral sensations of that experience: sonically, bodily and spiritually. I was also really inspired by a crop of vocal groups I was encountering or moments in the music I was listening to where group vocal experimentation was taking centre stage. I wanted a project where I could take that as far as I wanted and started to reach around to friends and friends of friends that wanted to sing regularly, which was pretty easy!

It was then and is now somewhat informal. We meet regularly, and when there are specific things to prepare for, rehearsals are more focussed. The membership of the choir is somewhat fixed now, which is necessary for things like recording, and performing live, but its eco-system is ever shifting. People step forward for specific tasks where they have capacity and interest; that can be logistics, visuals or taking on arrangements for specific projects, like our Greenham Common concert last year or the Horsemeat Disco set we did in 2017. Some songs and arrangements are brought fully formed to the choir by myself or other members; others are worked out collaboratively between different members, which gets more and more fluent the more we know and understand each other. I do tend to take most of the responsibility of running the choir and steering the sonic universe and I’ve poured a lot of my time, love and creativity into it. I feel incredibly lucky to have a group of people who are willing to come with me on that journey!

How has the pandemic made you rethink relationships?

Contrary to what I’ve described in my last answer, I consider myself to be quite self-sufficient, independent and introverted; so when the pandemic came around I wasn’t very anxious about getting through it or the enforced shrinking of my world I knew it would entail. But I think I’ve realised how much I do actually rely on having community, I suppose particularly the wider peripheries of your social universe that you’re unlikely to keep in touch with at a time like this, but who you’re used to seeing out and about regularly. So maybe I’m saying it’s made me realise how important all those different relationships are, your nearest and dearest right to the people you might just nod to at the party! It’s been sad to not have any of that, and I’m not really one for doing stuff online too much, so my approach has basically been to wait, and focus on the people I have close.

Who is your dream collaboration/s?

Collaboration has been so at the heart of my musical journey and I really cherish it, so I definitely need to mention all the people I’m already collaborating with, in Landshapes, DTC and Bloodmoon Project. I would really love to find someone to collaborate with visually. I’m always quite stumped when it comes to finding a visual world that works intrinsically with the music and it’s so powerful when the two are working harmoniously together, so that the visual is further communicating something in the music and vice versa. So I think I’d love to find a long-term collaborator in that arena.

How does singing together build relationships?

I think singing can bring communication down to really essential elements, which are so important to building relationships. You need to listen and vocalise in equal measure, you need to collaborate and read one another, and you’re really depending on one another to support, hold different parts and build something together. It also engenders community. When you’re singing together, you’re no longer alone, but part of something bigger, and that’s a really essential need for humans, to feel part of a wider community. I don’t think you could find a corner of the world where there are no singing practices and traditions, it clearly communicates something important and builds bonds between us.