Fans of a cappella singing and of pop music in general will revel in the joyful noise of Voasis, which performs six concerts at Warehouse 21 on the final four days of 2013. The ensemble’s artistic director is Deke Sharon, producer of the popular NBC television show The Sing-Off, which showcases a cappella groups. The eight members of Voasis appear under the auspices of the Santa Fe Desert Chorale.
“The Desert Chorale’s music director, Joshua Habermann, and I have been super-close friends since we were in the third grade,” Sharon said. “They have this pocket of time between Christmas and New Year, and they’ve wondered what they could do that fits the mission and nature of the Desert Chorale organization. He asked if I’d be interested in doing a contemporary a cappella thing, and I said, ‘Yeah, let’s talk more.’
“With Voasis, we have some of the country’s best young vocalists working in movies and singing backup for some of the biggest names. We’re in some ways replicating the Desert Chorale model, but doing it with pop/rock/jazz singers.”
The musical director of Voasis is Greg Jasperse, whose day job is director of vocal jazz at Western Michigan University. He has worked as a clinician and conductor all over North America. Among his credits, Jasperse sang with Adele on her song “Skyfall” at the 85th Annual Academy Awards last February.
The other members of Voasis are Genevieve Artadi, frontwoman of the Los Angeles electro-pop bands Pollyn and KNOWER; Loren Battley, who has a degree in jazz studies from WMU and has sung with several groups; Eric Bradley, boasting a long association with The Vantastix quartet, led by Dick Van Dyke; LC Powell, multi-Grammy and Emmy-winning music producer and director of the a cappella sextet LA6 (formerly Vybration/Groove 66); Katharine Hoye, possessor of a degree in ethnomusicology from UCLA and member of the a cappella band ARORA; Fletcher Sheridan, who has been a busy session singer in Los Angeles for 17 years; and Greg Whipple, whose résumé is full of television and film credits and who has worked with Burt Bacharach, Frankie Valli, and Roger Daltrey.
Sharon is the founder and director of the a cappella group The House Jacks and has shared stages with Ray Charles, The Four Tops, and Run-DMC, among many others. He was arranger, music director, and vocal producer for the Pitch Perfect franchise. Pasatiempo called him at his home in San Francisco.