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Volti
Volti, one of the leading professional vocal ensembles in the United States, has a primary purpose of performing contemporary American music. Having commissioned more than 120 new works by a diverse group of emerging and established composers, Volti is the only seven-time winner of the Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, and the 2023 winner of Chorus America’s prestigious Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence. Volti has been guided since 1979 by founding Artistic Director Robert Geary.
Events
California Festival
Volti presents a program of groundbreaking new works for unaccompanied voices: Brazilian composer Marcos Balter’s spectacular setting of color-themed poems by 20th-Century literary giant Fernando Pessoa; A San Francisco composer sets three poems by California poet Jane Hirshfield in Words Cast Shadows; Bay Area-born composer Lansing McLoskey sets an evocative poem by Norwegian poet Hans Børli; Singaporean composer Emily Koh, sets a patchwork of Teochew (a Chinese dialect) phrases from childhood; and Yu-Hui Chang, a native of Taiwan, sets two poems by Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the US.
Piece(s)/Composer(s)
THE BOOK OF COLORS, 2022 (CO-COMISSIONED BY THE CROSSING AND SAN DIEGO MASTER CHORALE)
Marcos Balter
WORDS CAST SHADOWS, 2023 (VOLTI COMMISSION)
Mark Winges
SETTE GRIME PÅ NATTA (HARNESSING THE NIGHT), 2019
Lansing McLoskey
NANUNIKU
Emily Koh
BEING - TWO COLLINS SONGS (VOLTI COMMISSION)
Yu-Hui Chang
Program Notes
In addition to presenting concerts and creating recordings of leading-edge unaccompanied music for vocal ensemble, Volti enjoys frequent collaborations. Last fall Volti participated in a nationwide consortium of vocal ensembles in a commission from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw titled "Ochre". Earlier this year they revived their collaboration with ODC/Dance, performing KT Nelson’s inspired staging of Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for the third time, to sold-out houses. Other recent and upcoming collaborators include the Del Sol Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, and San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Volti has also provided the chorus for visiting orchestras presented by Cal Performances, and has performed several times at Festival Napa Valley.
Listening to Volti is like visiting a contemporary art gallery, stimulating the mind, the imagination, and the heart.
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