Take me back to hrmusic.com
Kitka
Kitka is a professional women’s vocal ensemble dedicated to producing concerts,
recordings, and educational programs that develop new audiences for
music rooted
in Eastern European women’s vocal traditions. Kitka also strives to expand
the boundaries of this music as an expressive art form.Kitka's mission is accomplished through a busy itinerary of live performances, including a San Francisco Bay Area home concert series; state, regional, national, and international touring programs; community outreach activities and workshops; in-school programs; radio broadcasts; recording projects; master artist residencies; commissioning programs; and adventuresome collaborations. Kitka has deep ties to Eastern Europe. In 1986, the group performed at the Illinden Festival in Bitola, Macedonia. In 1991 Kitka members traveled to Bulgaria as part of a delegation of America’s finest Balkan singers, led by the Seattle vocalist and choral director Mary Sherhart and the Varna, Bulgaria-based master vocalist Vesela Illieva. This group of singers became the first non-indigenous ensemble to be invited to perform at the closing ceremonies of the 1991 Koprivshtitsa National Festival of Bulgarian Folklore. This historic performance was broadcast twice throughout Europe by Bulgarian National Television. In recent years, Kitka has hosted master artist residencies and collaborative concerts in Oakland, CA with some of the finest choral directors and folk singers from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Russia, and Georgia. Kitka’s singers have also conducted independent field research in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Russia, Former Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Hungary, as well as in Balkan and Slavic communities throughout America. Many of Kitka’s singers create original choral arrangements of folkloric material that they have gathered in the field. These works add a unique contemporary sensibility —distilled from centuries-old vocal traditions—to Kitka’s concert presentations. In the last two seasons, the group has also presented premieres of new music by fourteen Eastern European and American composers. In the year 2000, the group received major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation to launch our New Folksongs Commissioning Project, in which seven American composers (Pauline Oliveros, David Lang, Linda Tillery, Janet Kutulas, Chen Yi, Daniel Hoffman, Roy Whelden, and Richard Einhorn) have been engaged to write original new works to be sung by Kitka in the 2000 through 2002 seasons. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
|
