It has been just over two years since the release of their debut EP, titled “Bronze”, and Pipeline Vocal Project is at it again, with their follow-up EP “Silver” released earlier this month. I had a chance to catch up with them a bit on what they’ve been up to recently and get the low-down on this new release.
For those who may not be familiar, Pipeline Vocal Project, or PVP, is a contemporary a capella trio comprised of Adriana Latonio (soprano), Lisa Hawkins (alto/vocal percussion), and Molly Dieni (alto/bass). Formed in Anchorage in 2019, PVP has widened their horizons and shared their musical talents all around the world in recent years. They represented the United States at the World Expo in Dubai in 2022, performed in their first international a capella festival in Hong Kong this spring, and toured in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Jordan earlier this summer to perform and teach workshops and master classes.
This international mindset has carried over into their new music as well. Hawkins explained in an interview earlier this month how everything the trio is doing right now “focuses on bridging different languages and cultures together through music.”
“Between the three of us, we speak four languages and wanted to feature that diversity in our album,” she said.
Their dedication to this is immediately apparent from the EP’s first track, “I Wanna Be Like You (Multi-Lingual)” from Disney’s “The Jungle Book,” with lyrics in three of the group’s four known languages: English, Spanish and Japanese.
In the same way that PVP is much the same as they were when “Bronze” was released and yet also so much more, “Silver” truly is an evolution from “Bronze.”
Hawkins added, “Silver’ is a reflection of our growth from our “Bronze” era. […] While ‘Bronze’ was a more stripped down, authentic version of what our live show sounds like, [on Silver] we really took advantage of the production abilities of recording in a studio.”
Their growth is all the more apparent when you realize that both projects were in fact recorded in the same studio, a bedroom in their shared Anchorage home, and yet are so distinct from one another.
Where “Bronze” does well to portray the experience of a live performance, “Silver’s” more produced nature shows off their skills in a new way, and not just their multi-linguistic ones. One of the treats of a capella is the layering used to create the full soundscape that other groups do with instruments, simply with the human voice. This shines through in every element of the new EP, from the sounds of the jungle in track one to the harmonies to the monologue at the beginning of track two and the layered harmonies throughout the entire project. If this is what the “Silver” era sounds like, this writer can’t wait for what we can only expect will be the “Gold” era, and all the projects that lie beyond!
Pipeline Vocal Project can be found @pipelinevocalproject on most social media platforms. “Silver” is streaming now on all streaming platforms and can be purchased from the group’s website, pipelinevocalproject.com. All proceeds from the album purchased directly from their website go directly to the members.
This article was published in partnership with Arts Anchorage.
John Christensen is an Anchorage-based photographer, columnist, and creative who operates under the Candlewick Studios brand. He has written previously for the Anchorage Press.
