Foto-© Cathleen Wolf

Musik ist überall. Jeden Tag kann man neue Songs entdecken, wenn man nur hinhört. Von unbedeutend über ganz nett bis spektakulär ist alles dabei. Und manchmal, ganz selten, begegnet einem eine Art Rohdiamant. Gänsehaut pur, tief berührend, und einfach etwas ganz Besonderes. Kat Frankies Projekt B O D I E S fällt in diese Kategorie. Kat, die die Gruppe als ‘a cappella performance about what it means to be made of matter’ beschreibt, nahm sich die Zeit, uns zu einem Online-Gespräch zu treffen:

What inspired you to create a project centering around the body and the voice?
Maybe this is not a very exciting answer, but I always loved singing acapella. I’ve been doing it ever since I was a kid. I mean, how far back do you want to go..? I love singing, I’ve always been a singer, I love how there’s something magical about singing because your body is your instrument. You’re creating sound waves and vibrations through that physicality. And it just feels lovely and joyful to sing. And when you sing in harmony with your friends, there’s something really beautiful about all those vibrations coming together to create something that expresses an emotion or an idea. I always had some a cappella songs in my shows and it was always the highlight of the band shows. I knew that people liked hearing the acapella songs because it was always kind of a novelty moment. It was always a special moment in the band show to suddenly hear everyone in the band singing harmony together. I didn’t know if it would be something that could be sustained over time. A little while ago I did an experiment where I did acapella songs for half of a show, kind of like a proof of concept. The reaction from the audience was quite intense and suddenly it was like, oh, this, could be a show. This funny thing that we always did, and that was always my favourite thing to do, suddenly became an option that people may be interested in and, you know. Then I just wrote a bunch of music and we put it together as a show. And it’s become this thing that people really love, thank god. It’s come from something very instinctual, to something that’s really been manifested.

Ok wow, I have so many questions… How special is that, for you to come from this pure place you’re describing, where you’re doing something that resonates with you, singing with other people, and it ends up moving other people so deeply. Side note btw – I saw you perform in London earlier this year..
No you didn’t!!

I don’t think anyone in this church wasn’t crying by the end of it. When we left the church, there was also the brightest full moon in the sky and we were all like, what on earth have we actually just witnessed there?! I mean, what is this magic? What is it, do you think, that resonates so deeply with your audiences?
You know what, I think as cheesy as it is, there’s a little bit of magic in it. Oh, I have my theories… I think the main thing is that voices singing is the oldest form of music. It’s a very early form of expression. It’s something that we’ve been doing for thousands of years. I think because of that, there’s just something in us that a voice will reach in a way that maybe other forms of expression might not. Music has moved online, we’ve got all this technology, we’ve got our electric guitars, our production programmes and stuff. But at the end of the day there’s something about a voice singing to you that soothes you the best. There’s this power of an individual voice, and then suddenly you bring in harmony, and you’ve got all these interweaving vibrations. Then you bring in the space, the architecture, whether it’s the church or a concert hall, and suddenly sound is going around and enveloping you and passing through you physically. I think that’s a power that’s very hard to resist. I think it really comes back to something very essential in our human nature that we’re tapping into with our little songs.

Your little songs that are so big that they somehow just crack through everyone’s walls and then it’s like, woah, okay, yes, I’m here for it.
Do you have a form of inspiration that you seek or that you go to in terms of a cappella sounds, or blending voices or harmonies? You said somewhere that you wanted to avoid a classical choir sound..
Oh yeah, yeah, that’s true. I think it’s more just because we’re an eight piece, we’re not a 30 piece choir. When you have a 30 piece choir, there’s a lot of focus on creating a homogenous sound because that’s usually supportive of either a band or an orchestra. When you’ve got that many voices, you try and get everything aligned at the same time. But because we’re all lead singers, obviously having a good tone and good harmony and intonation is really important, but I also want to create a bit of space for everyone to offer the best of what they can do.Everyone sings a little bit differently and it doesn’t make sense when you’ve got such great singers to just try and squash everyone into one kind of vocal sound. This is something I’m really aware of when I write the arrangements these days. I’m really, really aware of how different people’s voices behave. And also the physicality of it, because it really comes down to people singing in different ways because their bodies are different shapes. I know this is a complete diversion from what your question was, but I’m really thankful that over the years we…, you know, we mostly work with the same group of people and when I’m writing now, I’m really listening for, okay, who’s going to sing this? What can they do? What’s going to help them? What’s going to be a framework for them to sing in the best way they can? So that’s just my little side thing about why we don’t try to sing like a choir.

You mentioned different bodies singing in different ways.. How much do you plan for and adapt to the way different bodies and their different states influence the music on any given day? How much do you tap into where you are finding yourselves? How much space is there to tap into that?
I think that’s the one scary thing about not having instruments on stage, because if you’re feeling a little bit tired or you’re feeling nervous – nerves are the worst thing you can have, when you have no other instruments to protect you.. Wait, are you a singer?

Oh well, I love to sing. I sing in a Georgian choir. I love crunchy harmonies. Does that make me a singer, I don’t know?
Oh, amazing! Okay, cool, so you get it, when you have that nervousness, your shoulders get tighter, you don’t have that same kind of control, you’re not sure if you’re gonna make that interval. We’re really aware of creating an environment that’s quite calm. We have to make sure that we sleep well, are not too dehydrated. We do half an hour of stretching and warmups and things, because you don’t just sing with your mouth. It’s everything, and we’re very aware of the physicality of it. It’s a little bit athletic and sometimes I would say it crosses over into that territory where you have to really take care of yourself.

Who did you look for when you’ve put the group together? What were you looking for? How did you choose?
I was looking for altos, because I’m an alto and I write in the alto range more often than not. So in the beginning I needed people that could sing what I wrote. But at the same time, from working in my band, I always had people come in and play keys and sing, like Albertina and Tara. It made sense to ask them to be in BODIES because we’ve done a lot of harmonising together over the years. Then I just sort of asked friends and friends of friends, if they knew of people, I did a little bit of internet stalking. The criteria in the beginning was that you had a range that kind of went into alto and could get quite low, and that you could bend notes. And then of course the biggest criteria of all, you had to be a lovely person to be around. I’ve learned the hard way in the past that sometimes you might invite the most talented person to be a part of your band, but if they’re horrible and make everyone’s lives hell, it doesn’t matter how good they play the drums. It doesn’t make the show better if there’s bad vibes. Talent, familiarity and being good to be around, that’s the criteria.

That’s excellent criteria. How do you collaborate between the eight of you? Do you have defined roles to some degree?
A little, obviously the main songwriting is me, and then I go out and I record all of the parts so that there’s a full song written. I’ll have sung all the harmonies because I want to check that it’s singable. Then I will send out individual tracks and everyone will listen to it and learn it. And then I think the more collaborative aspect comes when we start rehearsing it and you figure out how the lines are harmonising and work out if we embrace this dissonant thing. Do we change it? People have different ideas, depending on what their parts are. Tara is our soprano and so she’s really up there and she’ll have her own ideas. Everyone becomes more familiar with their parts than I do and then they offer ideas and things to bring in and make it better and to improve the arrangement and the performance. There’s a lot of polishing that comes from everybody else.

How is it different for you to write for an a cappella sound, as opposed to for a band like you’ve done before in the traditional setup, if you will?
It’s somehow both harder and easier. It’s easier in a way to test ideas because I’m a singer and I can sing them. If you write a song with a band it’s always gonna work. You bring in the drums, you’re bringing the bass, it’s fine, it’s gonna be good, all ingredients are there. Everyone who listens to modern music is familiar with that structure. I’ve done that so many times and I’ve made a lot of albums that way and you get into certain habits of doing things in similar ways. With BODIES suddenly, even though it’s stripped down to eight voices, everything is wide open structurally, creatively, concept wise. There’s a bit more room to be weird in a way. You’re presenting something on stage that already is a little bit unfamiliar to people. And because it’s eight voices and they’re all very close to each other and very similar, I’ve had to get a lot better at my music theory, which I didn’t have to think about very much before, I could just vibe it. When I first started this project, if you saw the sheets of people’s parts, they’re insane. I just would sing them and they would just come out in a blah, blah, blah way. And so people had all these wild parts and sometimes they’d be way up here and the next part they’d be down there. Now I’ve learned a lot about writing to make sure that people aren’t jumping around wildly, and that the arrangements make sense. And I’m still learning because I want it to be even better.

How interesting is that. I guess, if I understand it right, what you’re explaining technically is simpler on paper, but maybe you had to create all this chaos to then bring it back to the essence of what something is?
I was definitely often like wow, I could have scrapped a lot of that, but maybe we’d never gotten there in the first place. I mean, I’m really lucky that I can sing and then I can check everything. At the end of the day, that’s the best way to write. To put two things together and see if it sticks.

So in a way the place becomes your ninth person in the band, and, rather than playing something to it or in it, you perform with it?
You definitely use it as part of the performance. It’s like the only true instrument in the group. The architecture can really influence the show and the performance.

Okay we’re now really running out of time. But you just mentioned the green crematorium video – and wow how stunning on every tiny level that is. The theatrical simplicity, if you can call it that, with all these elements coming together. The blended voices and the space and the clothes.. How did all of that come together?
In Sydney, I studied design and so things were very much about reducing things to a concept for me, I was always interested in finding the most minimal, maybe the core of the thing that is being expressed and reducing it down to that. And I’m not intentionally a minimalist, but somehow I like it when things are really clear. I think sometimes with these videos, it’s really about space and voice. I’m constantly searching for nice spaces to do new videos in, they’re quite hard to find. And then you also have to have the money to rent them because they’re not cheap to work in. And I have a filmmaker, Timothy Bean, that I collaborate with on these videos most of the time. We always just sort of get together and check a space out and see if it can work. And then what happens is that the gang comes together and we all try and figure out, okay, what can we wear? And I mean, there’s a lot of really boring behind the scenes stuff that goes on in making a pretty video, you know. Basically, I have a list of dream spaces and slowly over time, I hope that we can sing in them and film in them.

Sounds like there’s lots to come. Great news.
I think we can do a lot with this. It’s somehow bizarre that just reducing a performance to it’s most basic unit somehow has created all this possibility and more possibilities creatively than I ever had with a band. It’s kind of wild in a way, it’s amazing.

What’s been the most rewarding to you?
I would say the second show that we ever did at the Elbphilharmonie. When we first launched Bodies just before Covic we did a show at the Elfie and it was a sold out show and it was great. But to be allowed to go back the second time and also have it sell out and for this time actually to know what we were doing, to have some experience and to be able to make decisions about what we’re doing and to be intentional about it. That was a whole different level, it was far above and beyond what I ever thought would be possible with this project.

Kat Frankie B O D I E S live:
11.01.25 Bremen, Die Glocke
12.01.25 Darmstadt, Staatstheater
14.01.25 Nürnberg, Löwensaal
15.01.25 Hannover, Pavillon
16.01.25 Köln, Philharmonie
20.01.25 Berlin, Philharmonie – ausverkauft!
25.01.25 Erfurt, Theater Erfurt
15.02.25 Dresden, Kulturpalast
21.02.25 Hamburg, Elbphilharmonie – ausverkauft!
28.02.25 Leipzig, Gewandhaus
15.03.25 Gütersloh, Theater Gütersloh
02.12.25 München, Isarphilharmonie
03.12.25 Stuttgart, Liederhalle-Mozartsaal