Rehearsing in parking garages and backyards, the all-female vocal quintet, VAMP, came together in early 2020. In the summer of 2024, VAMP began recording their debut album while learning more about music business. On Thursday, the vocal group performed at Bates Concert Hall for a packed room, celebrating their self-titled album’s release.
VAMP consists of vocalists Adrienne Pedrotti Bingamon, Page Stephens, Laura Mercado-Wright, Mary Ashton Gray and Katrina Saporsantos. Their album includes original songs by Mercado-Wright, along with pieces by composers such as Maddalena Casulana, Caroline Shaw and Peter Stopschinski.
“(Singing Mercado-Wright’s music is) like putting on your favorite sweater,” Stephens said. “It fits because she knows our voices so intimately, and what we do and how we sound together. So you couldn’t ask for a more comfortable situation vocally, but she also is a deeply sensitive person, and I think that really comes across in her music.”
Available on Bandcamp, vinyl and CDs, their album creates a unique listening experience, the record moving through genres including classical, contemporary choral and jazz.
“There’s something special about finding that sort of perfect unison or perfect crunchy chord and creating those frequencies (while) singing together,” Bingamon said. “That just feels so human.”
Exploring themes of friendship, love and social constructs, the album feels relatable to the female experience. Their song, “Anthem,” plays with poetry, taking the national anthem and removing key words from its lyrics to showcase a feminine perspective of patriotism.
“O say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave / ore the land of the free and the home of the
brave?” Mercado-Wright sang. “Where war and battle their blood washed out / No refuge from terror, flight, gloom or grave.”
“Smile” discusses the emotions around constantly smiling and how it feels to be asked to smile.
“It’s commentary on, ‘Why do we always smile?’ (such as) when men say ‘You should smile more, or you’d look prettier if you smiled,’” Stephens said. “It’s about the way that lands and we so often (smile) and there’s this feeling of kind of like self loathing after you capitulate.”
Stephens, who works as the assistant director of operations for the Butler School of Music, said director Susan Thomas invited VAMP to have the release party at Bates Concert Hall, allowing them to invite more people and make admissions free.
“I’d heard some of their songs before, but hearing them in the space of the concert hall and the acoustics in there was fantastic,” concert attendee Amy Koelvel said. “It was gorgeous in that space, especially. They have such excellent voices.”
During the concert, Mercado-Wright said she never dared to try composing before VAMP, as she didn’t feel she had permission.
“But when the world was ending (in 2020), I thought, ‘Maybe this is the moment where nobody will know and I have permission,” Mercado-Wright said at the concert. “It’s a parking garage and nobody’s going to hear us ever. … I am the composer that I am because (VAMP has) been so generous, open and discerning, and incredibly talented musicians and I am forever grateful.”
