A NEW SEASON BEGINS!
We are so excited we can barely stand it! We are coming off a wonderful season that included collaborations with the Del Sol String Quartet in the première of Huang Ruo’s Angel Island Oratorio, and with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra in the première of Denial by Michael Gilbertson. We also gave the première of Eric Tuan’s In the Rain Shadow along with remarkable repertoire by Tania Léon, Aftab Darvishi, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, and Jens Ibsen.
What lies ahead looks fantastic.
In November we will have a double bill of world premières. You may remember the works we had created for us specifically for online presentation. One of those works was Ink by legendary Pamela Z and it was a great success for us. One of our most highly recognized Bay Area composers, Pamela has garnered the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship among her many awards. With the generous support of the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, we will now take Ink live in its première as a staged production at ODC Theater.
The balance of the program will be the world première performance of a work by Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw, also one of the preeminent composers working today. Since 2013, we have been presenting a series of new works funded by the Ann Stookey Fund for New Music in collaboration with lead partner The Crossing (Philadelphia) and Cantori (NYC). The new work by Caroline Shaw will be the final project of the Ann Stookey Fund. We can’t wait to discover what this exciting young composer and singer will send to us.
Valérie Sainte-Agathe will be our guest conductor for the November program. Valérie is one of the leading conductors and interpreters of new music in the Bay Area. Currently serving as Director of Philharmonia Baroque Chorale and Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, we welcome Valérie as Maestra of our November Concerts. What a triumvirate of outstanding women – two composers and conductor!
Stay with us! Things are interesting, and both music and Volti are unstoppable.
Bob Geary
Artistic Director
Volti is an instrument –
bridging ethnicities, cultures, and generations in our community and beyond.
As a dynamic vehicle for the musical expression of artistic and personal perspectives,
we give voice to each person’s unique contribution, and to the breadth of human experience,
through the power of voices combined.
We invite you – composers, listeners, singers – to join us
in the discovery of what it means to be a citizen of this world, at this critical moment in time.
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Volti – Singing without a net since 1979
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“The Night House” by Yu-Hui Chang
For her Volti commission in 2009, Yu-Hui Chang set two poems by the wonderful poet Billy Collins. Click on the link below to listen to the second of the set. The full piece - "Being: Two Collins Songs" - is on the Volti CD "House of Voices." The CD title is taken from...
Privilege Mvmt 5: We Cannot Leave
Composer, singer, bandleader and recording artist TED HEARNE (b.1982, Chicago) draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging across music's full terrain, to create intense, personal and multi-dimensional works. Ted composed Privilege for Volti in 2009, when he was the...
Ecstatic Meditations: No. 4. How God Answers the Soul
Ecstatic Meditations: No. 4. How God Answers the Soul by Aaron Jay Kernis “Ecstatic Meditations” is a set of four pieces by Aaron Jay Kernis, with texts by the medieval mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg. The National Endowment for the Arts has named this work one of 75...
TURN UP
Robert Paterson’s “Graffiti Canons”
“Graffiti Canons” was inspired by graffiti images (as the title implies). It is particularly effective to listen to it while watching the accompanying slide show (YouTube link below). Volti “discovered” Robert Paterson when he was our young composer in residence under...
Ruth Crawford: Three Chants for Women’s Chorus
It’s highly unusual for Volti to sing music written in 1930, but when you listen to this you’ll understand why. We sang this piece at the Bard Music West festival in 2018, “The World of Henry Cowell.” Movement 1, To an Unkind God https://youtu.be/qsFVlKz__cg ...
Pandora’s Gift
Pandora's Gift by Mark Winges Pandora’s Gift is a 35-minute-long staged choral piece composed by Mark Winges, premiered in May 2015 at Z Space in San Francisco by Volti and Ensemble from the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir. Libretto by Denise Newman; staging by...