Meara O’Reilly Vocal Ensemble

The 2019 debut of California composer, inventor, and performer Meara O’Reilly lasted only 10 minutes. But the 10 minutes of Hockets for Two Voices overflowed with so many ideas and wondrous moments of sound that the EP felt much bigger, as though the seven tracks of 100 seconds or less contained entire worlds. A hocket is an ancient and widespread form, where the melody is split across multiple parts. You’ve heard it in choral music, Ghanaian music, and math-rock alike. O’Reilly uses it in part to explore the idea that, though only two notes are ever happening at once, the human ear and mind may trick themselves into thinking there are many more at play, a concept called pseudopolyphony. Hockets is mesmerizing and emotional, its dizzying motion and rhapsodic urges suggesting high-stakes, high-skill ping-pong duels. As Lee Ranaldo put it, Hockets “sends you, moves you, destroys you with beauty.”

At Big Ears 2026, the Meara O’Reilly Vocal Ensemble will not only perform Hockets for Two Voices in full but also deliver the world premiere of an O’Reilly work for four voices. Three of those vocalists—Mingjia Chen, Eliza Bagg, and Jodie Landau—are members of Roomful of Teeth and composers and songwriters in their own right. (Landau also performs in Wild Up.) The fourth, Linnea Sablosky, is currently completing an album that includes Appalachian ballads and Sacred Harp numbers and has toured Hockets for Two Voices around the world alongside Chen.