THE SEASON CONTINUES!
Our mid-season report is a happy one. We are still glowing from the successful and exhausting completion of three sold out performances plus a recording session of Path of Miracles by Joby Talbot in collaboration with ODC/Dance. Legendary choreographer and creator KT Nelson once again led us on the path through the austere and magnificent spaces of Grace Cathedral.
Now we move on to the third and final program of our concert series, followed by guest appearances at UC Davis, the Chorus America National Conference in San Francisco, and Festival Napa Valley in July.
In May, we conclude our annual concert series with a signature program including premières of new music by two of the Bay Area’s leading composers, Eric Tuan and Mark Winges. On that program we will also perform Given Sound by Trevor Weston and we will reprise Hematite by Caroline Shaw, one movement of her longer piece Ochre which Volti premièred under the direction of Valérie Sainte-Agathe on our fall 2022 concert. Finally, we will sing Žibuoklė Martinaitytė’s Aletheia, recently premièred by the Latvian Radio Choir. Volti has previously performed works by Žibuoklė including The Blue of Distance, which you can hear on our CD The Color of There Seen from Here.
Shortly after those performances 11 of our singers will join the UC Davis Orchestra under the brilliant conductor Christian Baldini for a performance of Luciano Berio’s Laborintus. This follows our 2020 performance of Berio’s Sinfoniaand we are honored to work with Maestro Baldini again.
On June 2 Volti will be one of six Bay Area vocal ensembles selected to perform at Grace Cathedral for the Chorus America National Conference, and on July 18 we are pleased to return to Festival Napa Valley to perform Symphony No. 6, Vessels of Light by Lera Auerbach and selected works for chorus and orchestra by Gordon Getty.
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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Paradise: IV. Lullaby
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...
Songs of Lowly Life: No. 4. Lullaby
Songs of Lowly Life: No. 4. Lullaby by Stacy Garrop “Songs of Lowly Life” (2011) was the result of Volti’s third commission to Stacy Garrop. Stacy chose to set five poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African-American poet to gain national and international...
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The Tower and the Garden
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 Keith...
Gratitude sutra
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...