Sonos sextet brings a new twist to a cappella

The six-voice Sonos elevates a cappella to a new level of musical sophistication, reinterpreting contemporary artists from Bjork to Radiohead with a sound that is bold, fresh, richly textured and subtly sensual.

And they do it all without instruments or synthesized backup, although they make judicious use of electronic effects pedals that can split their vocal notes into two tones an octave apart.

Their own agile voices provide a tapestry of sounds so finespun they blur the lines between vocals and instrumental/percussive back-up. They are their own band.

The sextet, which plays the Spreckels Performing Arts Center on Sunday, has been touring the country in rented minivans. They recently collaborated with renowned writer Margaret Atwood, providing choral back-up to a dramatic reading in New York of her post-apocalyptic new novel “The Year of the Flood.”

And to think that Sonos first premiered live onstage a mere 20 months ago right here at Maria Carrillo High School.

Three of the group’s 20-something members are proteges of Carrillo award-winning music coach Gail Bowers. Ben McLain, Paul Peglar and Jessica Freedman first honed their vocal chops under Bowers with the Carrillo High School Jazz Choir, which will open their show at Spreckels. So it was fitting that they did their test run in Santa Rosa before stepping back from the stage for six months to invent and polish their sleek performance style.

But Carrillo and the Santa Rosa music scene was their entry point.

“The skills I learned there, I use every day — site reading and professionalism,” said McLain, 26, who went on to study opera and drama at UC Irvine.

Firm foundation

Freedman, 22, who sang with the campus Awaken A Cappella group while studying jazz vocals at UCLA, credits Bowers and the quality of her program at Carrillo with inspiring her interest in group singing and with giving all three a firm foundation from which to innovate.

“A lot of the group has had a lot of experience with unaccompanied singing in general,” she explains, talking by cell phone from a Maryland turnpike. “Barbershop, choral singing, vocal jazz. We’ve had a lot of experience to bring to the table. But doing something more modern and new like this is taking it to a whole new place.”

From their repertoire to their arrangements, the group, which also includes Chris Harrison, Katharine Hoye and Rachel Bearer, aims not only to “defy stereotypes,” as Freedman puts it, but to distance themselves from “kitsch,” as McLain explains.

Live onstage, they’re comfortable performing acoustically. In the studio, they make electronic vocal music, with their collection of pedals and loops serving as the seventh member of the ensemble, according to Hoye, who also attended UCLA.

McLain, in addition to singing leads and harmonies, is the resident beatboxer, a form of vocal percussion.

“I’m literally not singing or phonating through my chords. I’m flapping around my tongue and lips and clicking,” he says.

Grew up in Kenwood

He honed his skill as a kid growing up in Kenwood. He recorded his first tracks on his dad’s little mini tape recorder.

“My first cassette was Salt-N-Pepa and my first album was Dr. Dre. I was in fourth or fifth grade,” he says with a laugh.

He emphasized that while the group does try to evoke sounds, they aren’t overtly trying to imitate guitars and other musical instruments, as some collegiate a capella groups do.

Sonos fuses a classic choral sensibility with a modern repertoire of music, performing covers of Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal,” Rufus Wainwright’s “Oh What a World” and Imogen Heap’s “Come Here Boy.”

While Harrison takes the lead on much of the arranging and produced and mixed the new CD with manager and group organizer Hugo Vereker, Sonos’s strength, members say, is in the group. Although they switch off taking the lead, each voice is essential.

“If one of us goes down, we don’t perform,” says Peglar, who calls the skillful synthesis of a capella both “organic” and “intangible.”

“It could’ve been centuries earlier with a piece of classical music, but we’re taking something from last year and making it just as haunting and interesting. I think that’s what’s most captivating about us,” says Peglar, who studied musical theater at UCLA.

He and McLain have been collaborating for years, honing their early barbershop harmonics with the quartet Total Chaos starting when they were sophomores at Carrillo 10 years ago. They performed and competed throughout high school, racking up awards. The pair, who are impossible to pigeonhole artistically, also perform as a comedy duo, “Ball Point Pen.” Peglar has appeared uncredited at the keyboards on the FOX musical comedy show, “Glee.” McLain has also done some television, including a spot on the soap opera, “General Hospital.”

Hard business

McLain says he knows he’s chosen a hard business where success too often is a “luck of the draw,” so he is prepared to enter whatever performance door opens and looks most promising. Right now, the bets are on Sonos, which came together synergistically just as a capella is making a comeback. NBC has announced it is developing “Sing Off,” a new reality a capella competition show.

“We’re kind of breaking ground in terms of what we’re doing with this genre,” says Peglar. “No one knows what to expect because there is no expectations to be met.

“We’re creating them. It makes it difficult because we don’t know what’s right. Our label doesn’t know what’s right. Our manager doesn’t know what’s right. We’re all discovering together. But we have so far found a way to strike a balance between what we want to sound like and what we want to sing.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.