Season 33
Music For The Adventurous

Volti celebrates 32 years

"Volti may well be the finest collection of chamber singers in the country"
-- SF Classical Voice

Volti explores the border between the poetry of words and pure musical sounds. Four composers from the Pacific Rim and a young East Coast Indian-American composer show some of the complexity and variety of music being written today. Commissioned by Volti and originally premiered in 2010, Robin Estrada's Paghahandog explodes and deconstructs a short Tagalog text of dedication into a kaleidoscope of joyful sound. By contrast, Without Words by Huang Ruo paints the minimal text of Li Yü (the last emperor of the Tang dynasty) with delicate brushstrokes. John Stirling Walker's memorial for Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired the moving work The Homecoming by San Franciscan David Conte, originally written for the 40th anniversary of King's death. Reena Esmail captures the dense suspension of Carol Muske-Dukes' poetry in her finely wrought White Key, which will receive its West Coast premiere. A new commission from Seattle composer John Muehleisen, setting texts by Gertrude Stein, completes this program.

Volti joins forces with some of the finest women's and children''s choirs in the Bay Area to spotlight new music being written for treble voices. The program will include the premiere of a new work by young Stanford composer Eric Tuan, the world premiere of Mar eterna by Mexican composer Jose Luis Hurtado, as well as the dramatic Urok by Lojze Lebic, based on an ancient Slovenian spell. Performers include the Peninsula Women's Chorus, Ancora and Ensemble from the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir, and Musae.

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