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...
LCCE + Volti perform Gregory Spears – The Tower and the Garden The Tower and the Garden is a deep meditation on themes of humanity and the environment, composed by Gregory Spears for voices and string quartet, with texts by Thomas Merton, Denise Levertov, and...
Gratitude sutra by Forrest Pierce Thoughts about “Gratitude Sutra” from composer Forrest Pierce: During a period of grief, I found myself unable to compose. The work I had been attempting, a setting of St. Francis of Assisi’s Cantico delle Creature, required too much...
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...
Paradise: IV. Lullaby by Shawn Crouch “Paradise” was originally composed for Chanticleer in 2009. Shawn Crouch substantially revised it for Volti in 2013. “Paradise” is based on the poems of poet Brian Turner, an Iraq War veteran, whose moving accounts of the war are...