Resonant Bodies Festival at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times Resonant Bodies Festival "Bravement," with Lucy Deghrae, center (mouth uncovered). The Resonant Bodies Festival opened its inaugural three-day celebration of contemporary vocal music on Thursday evening at ShapeShifter Lab in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The raw yet cozy 4,200-square-foot space lived up to its name that evening. In equal measures intelligent, playful, ambitious and moving, the program, performed by three gifted sopranos, illuminated the shape-shifting power of the human voice. Ariadne Greif, at ShapeShifter Lab. The most dramatic and seductive demonstration of this was the performance by Ariadne Greif, who possesses a luminous, expressive voice and an uncanny ability to imitate bird song. In George Crumb's deeply affecting "Apparition," bird calls and other wordless vocalizations link a song cycle on the subject of living and dying. With Jason Wirth spinning a gossamer web of unusual sounds on the piano, Ms. Greif was able to sing with a quiet intensity that approached prayerful ecstasy. Before performing her own "Three Beloved, Old Songs, in a New Way" for soprano, toys and electronics, Ms. Greif enlisted the audience in a re-enactment of selected instructions from Yoko Ono's "Grapefruit" (1964), including a reminder to breathe, instructions for folding a paper crane and a game of passing a whispered message from ear to ear. While listeners turned sheets of paper into odd approximations of winged creatures, she created hauntingly beautiful pieces with the help of a loop pedal, layering sighs, tongue clicks and whistled bird calls underneath melodies by Machaut, Monteverdi and Jean Baptiste de Bousset. Her set ended with the charming "Two Selections From "Calligrammes," " chansonlike settings of Apollinaire texts by Albert Behar, who accompanied Ms. Greif on accordion. Vocal versatility and an omnivorous curiosity were the hallmarks of the performance by Lucy Dhegrae, who founded the festival. In Jason Eckhardt's "Dithyramb," from "Tongues," she explored the timbre and color of individual consonants, which become the rhythmic fuel of the piece. In the gospel-tinged "In Old Virginny" for voice and double bass, by Shawn Jaeger, it's the bowed bass (played elegantly by Doug Balliett) that is agitated and cerebral, while the vocal part is natural and free. Mr. Balliett defined the next piece, his own "Clytie and the Sun," as "a rap cantata for rapper, soprano, harp, saxophone, piano and electric guitar." His texts, based on a story from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," were brilliant and witty, but his delivery was too ironically poised to be convincing. There were nice textures in the music, especially in the interplay of piano, harp and guitar, and in the blending of Ms. Dhegrae's wordless singing and Mr. Balliett's recitation. Ms. Dhegrae finished her set with Lautaro Mantilla's uncomfortable but moving "Bravement" for 13 sopranos and as many light bulbs, which plays on themes of community, censorship and self-expression through wordless humming, sighs and other vocal gestures. For most of the piece, the singers face away from the audience, with the effect that the sound seems to emanate not from individual mouths, but from a field of "resonant bodies." The final performance of the evening was given over to a mesmerizing rendition of Morton Feldman's "Three Voices" for voice and tape by the preternaturally focused Canadian soprano Charlotte Mundy, with meticulously balanced electronics by Elliot Cole. Lasting close to an hour and populated only sparsely with words, by Frank O'Hara, it's a work that is rarely performed. Here, in front of a magically cough-free audience, the quiet, swirling textures of Feldman's hypnotic work were able to unfold in all their subtle, unhurried grandeur. The Resonant Bodies Festival continues through Saturday at ShapeShifter Lab, 18 Whitwell Place, between First and Carroll Streets, Park Slope, Brooklyn; (646) 820-9452, resonantbodies.wordpress.com.