PREVIEW : Electric Phoenix Hums on the Cutting Edge of New Music for Voice

Most people walk away from their first Electric Phoenix concert shaking their heads and asking each other, “How do they do that?”

The London-based vocal ensemble, set to appear Tuesday night in the Roy O. Disney Music Hall at CalArts, performs seemingly impossible feats with the human voice by using what is called extended vocal technique.

They tweet, they warble, they hum, they moan. They make sounds that you’ve never heard before in a concert hall.

Sometimes they take air in, instead of out, as they sing; other times their voices create reinforced harmonies--one voice makes more than one note, in the manner of chanting Tibetan monks.

With electronic enhancement, the possibilities expand: suddenly, four voices sound like 12, as in a piece to be performed Tuesday night by composer David Bedford, in which a harmonizer electronically splits each voice into three parts.

“Many of the extended techniques we use are normal, everyday sounds, like a kissing noise or a snore, which a few composers have been clever enough to put into a musical context,” said Terry Edwards, the group’s artistic director and bass singer.

Other members of the 10-year-old group include sound technician John Whiting, soprano Judith Rees, mezzo Meriel Dickinson and tenor David Runswick, who wrote “I Sing the Body Electric” for the group and is also an accomplished bass guitarist. Runswick also has performed with Cleo Laine, John Dankworth and Frank Sinatra.

Many modern composers have expressed an interest in writing for the group. Luciano Berio, the world-renowned Italian composer, is writing a work for Electric Phoenix and will conduct the group later this year in Leningrad, Rio de Janeiro and Bologna.

The group also collaborates occasionally with the Kronos Quartet, forming a vocal-string octet on the cutting edge of new music. Four of the pieces to be performed Tuesday (written by Henry Purcell, Benjamin Britten, Jacob Handl and Olivier Messiaen) were originally meant for choral groups, but by prerecording certain parts, members of Electric Phoenix manage to make the works sound tailored for them.

Also on the program is “Madrigals,” by American composer William Brooks, which Edwards calls “a brilliant glossary of extended vocal technique. It’s a marvelous example of what can be done with extensions from normal singing.”

In “Vox II,” written by Trevor Wishart, Britain’s leading pioneer in extended vocal techniques, the quartet will take their voices through the different vocal techniques of several ethnic cultures.

Electric Phoenix performs Tuesday, Feb. 9, at 8 p.m. in the Roy O. Disney Music Hall, California Institute of the Arts, 24700 W. McBean Parkway, Valencia. Tickets are $5 and $2 for students and seniors. For more information call (818) 367-5507.