Volti San Francisco This is what happened. More new directions in American choral music Volti’s professional singers, under the direction of founder and Artistic Director Robert Geary, are dedicated to the discovery, creation, and performance of new vocal music. The ensemble’s mission—to foster and showcase contemporary American music and composers, and to introduce contemporary vocal music from around the world to local audiences—has led to performances of a vast amount of new music and to the commissioning of nearly 100 new works, by emerging as well as established composers. Hailed by San Francisco Classical Voice as “undoubtedly the finest collection of new music singers we have,” Volti has completed 37 seasons of innovation and exploration. Nationally recognized as a pioneer in new vocal music, Volti is the first ensemble to have won the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music six times. Art is redefined in every generation by the best and the brightest, artists who are paying attention to the world around them. Volti works with composers who explore timely issues, seeking to illuminate and give voice to a broad spectrum of the human experience and to express spirituality in ways that push the boundaries of traditional sacred and classical sources. Through the exploration of the nexus between poetry and sound, Volti joins the creative process of a composer compelled to express this thing, at this time, in this way. At its best, this process can produce the aural equivalent of a sunspot—an explosion of energy, a flash of brilliance, maybe even a glimpse of some profound truth seen in a new and breathtaking way. Listening to Volti is like visiting a contemporary art gallery, stimulating the mind, the imagination and the heart. www.VoltiSF.org We invited five of our favorite composers to write something for us. This is what happened. ROBIN ESTRADA (b. 1970) 1 Paghahandog (2010)* 9:19 STACY GARROP (b. 1970) Songs of Lowly Life (2011)* 2 Dawn 2:43 Soloist: Kelly Ballou 3 Life 1:12 4 Not They Who Soar 3:32 5 Lullaby 1:39 Soloist: Jeff Bennett 6 Old 5:12 MARK WINGES (b. 1951) Canticles of Rumi (2009 - 2011)* 7 Where Everything Is Music 3:23 8 Special Plates 4:03 9 The Waterwheel 2:12 10 Quietness 3:54 11 A Wished-for Song 1:37 JOHN MUEHLEISEN (b. 1955) ... is knowing ... (2011)* Commissioned for Volti by Pamela Langston-Cox and Thomas Cox 12 If you had three husbands 1:50 13 A Waist 1:50 14 A Portrait of One­­ - Harry Phelan Gibb 3:47 15 Susie Asado 1:49 SHAWN CROUCH (b. 1977) Paradise (2009/Revised 2013)** 16 Mihrab 1:48 17 Chorale No. 1 2:15 Trio: Cecilia Lam, Colby Smith, Sharmila Guha Lash 18 A Soldier’s Arabic 2:37 19 Chorale No. 2 - Sadiq - Chorale No. 3 3:55 20 Lullaby 2:51 21 Mihrab 3:42 Soloist: Emily Ryan Total Duration 65:14 * Commissioned by Volti ** Originally commissioned and premiered by Chanticleer, 2009. Revised for Volti, 2013. Paghahandog (Dedication) Robin Estrada (b. 1970) 2010 Volti Commission Robin Estrada ranks among the boldest and most innovative Filipino composers, focusing on contemporary art music influenced by Asian indigenous traditions. Estrada received his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, studying with Cindy Cox, Ed Campion and Ken Ueno. He has also worked with Dan Becker and David Conte (San Francisco Conservatory of Music), and Josefino Toledo, Ramon Santos and Jose Maceda (University of the Philippines). Estrada’s works have been performed in numerous international settings including the IFCM World Choral Expo, Vietnam International Choir Competition, Conference and Festival of Asian Composers’ League in Taiwan, the Nagano Music Festival, the Federation Music Week-Contemporary Music of Australia and Asia Pacific, the American Choral Directors Association Conference, and the International Kammerchör Wettbewerb. His awards include the Hoefer Prize, Nicola di Lorenzo Prize, the SFCM Choral Composition Contest, and the I Concurso Coral de Ateneo Musica Nova Award. www.robinestrada.com Composer’s Note Paghahandog, a “dedication,” is exactly that. Text and music function as the literal and the material abstraction of the dedication itself. The text is set to music that is the actual entity of dedication. The words (in Tagalog) are deconstructed and used as musical material for the composition. Certain aural devices were inspired by sounds of Philippine indigenous instruments such as the patteteg (a tapered bamboo blade laid across the thighs of the player and struck with two thin bamboo sticks) and the kulintang (a set of knobbed bronze pot gongs similar to the bonang of Javanese gamelan). The formal structure of the piece is reminiscent of M.C. Escher’s graphic artworks (Sky and Water, Day and Night, Metamorphosis) that illustrate gradual morphing of visual objects in physical space. Musical material in Paghahandog is transformed in temporal space utilizing music processes. In certain instances, processes overlap and some occur over an extended period. Sa sinomang nakikinig To those who are listening Nakakarinig Who can listen At naririnig And who can be heard Songs of Lowly Life Stacy Garrop (b. 1970) 2011 Volti Commission Stacy Garrop’s music is centered on direct and dramatic narrative. The sharing of stories is a defining element of our humanity; we strive to share with others the experiences and concepts that we find compelling. Her chamber and orchestral works are published by Theodore Presser Company, and she self-publishes her choral works under Inkjar Publishing Company. She is a Cedille Records recording artist and has works on nine of their CDs, with works on ten additional record labels. Her choral works have been performed by Chanticleer, Chicago a cappella, Clerestory, Grant Park Music Festival Chorus, Princeton Singers, Santa Cruz Chamber Singers, Voices of Ascension, and Volti. Her choral projects include six sets of sonnets written by Edna St. Vincent Millay (consisting of 16 sonnets total), and Terra Nostra, an oratorio for four soloists, adult choir, children’s choir, and chamber orchestra, commissioned by the San Francisco Choral Society and Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir. She earned degrees in music composition at the University of Michigan (B.M.), University of Chicago (M.A.), and Indiana University (D.M.). She is on the composition faculty of the annual Fresh Inc Festival, a two-week summer program sponsored by Fifth House Ensemble, and was composer in residence for Volti’s Choral Institute for High School Singers in 2011. For more information, please visit her website at www.garrop.com or her all-things-composition blog at www.composerinklings.com. Composer’s Note Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African-American poet and novelist to gain national and international recognition. Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1872, his mother was a former slave and his father had escaped from slavery prior to serving in both infantry and cavalry divisions during the Civil War. During his life, Dunbar produced twelve volumes of poetry, four books of short stories, five novels, and a play. The subject matter of Dunbar’s poems encompasses a wide array of topics, from his observations of nature, love, and life to his renditions (many of which are written in dialect) of African-American life. Dunbar’s life was ultimately cut short when he contracted tuberculosis and died at the age of 33 in 1906. The title of my song cycle is taken from Dunbar’s 1896 book Lyrics of Lowly Life, from which several of the texts are drawn. I. Dawn An angel, robed in spotless white, Bent down and kissed the sleeping night. Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone. Men saw the blush and called it Dawn. II. Life A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in, A minute to smile and an hour to weep in, A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, And never a laugh but the moans come double; And that is life! A crust and a corner that love makes precious, With a smile to warm and the tears to refresh us; And joy seems sweeter when cares come after, And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter; And that is life! III. Not They Who Soar Not they who soar, but they who plod Their rugged way, unhelped, to God Are heroes; they who higher fare, And, flying, fan the upper air, Miss all the toil that hugs the sod. ‘Tis they whose backs have felt the rod, Whose feet have pressed the path unshod, May smile upon defeated care, Not they who soar! High up there are no thorns to prod, Nor boulders lurking ‘neath the clod To turn the keenness of the share, For flight is ever free and rare; But heroes they the soil who’ve trod, Not they who soar! IV. Lullaby Sing me, sweet, a soothing psalm, Holy, tender, low, and calm, Full of drowsy words and dreamy, Sleep half seen where the sides are seamy; Lay my head upon your breast; Sing me to rest. V. Old I have seen peoples come and go Alike the Ocean’d ebb and flow; I have seen kingdoms rise and fall Like springtime shadows on a wall. I have seen houses rendered great That grew from life’s debased estate, And all, all, all is change I see, So, dearest God, take me, take me. Canticles of Rumi Mark Winges (b. 1951) 2009 - 2011 Volti Commission Mark Winges, born in Louisville, Kentucky, currently resides in San Francisco, where he has been Volti’s resident composer/advisor since 1990. He is a graduate of the College-Conservatory of Music—University of Cincinnati and of San Francisco State University, and has studied at the Musikhögskolan in Stockholm, Sweden. His principal teachers were Ellsworth Milburn, Henry Onderdonk, and Arne Mellnäs. He has had residencies at Ragdale, the MacDowell Colony and Fundación Valparaíso. His works have been performed by the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Works-in-Progress: Berlin, the Empyrean Ensemble, Eight Strings and a Whistle, Earplay, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, the Pharos Music Project (NY), Carmina Slovenica (Slovenia), the Guangdong Choir (China), Aarhus Pigekor (Denmark), the Marin, Berkeley, Nashua (NH) and Piteå (Sweden) Symphonies and many others. His music has been heard on radio programs in the US, Europe, South America and Australia. www.markwinges.com Jalal Al-Din Rumi, born in 1207, was the founder of Sufism, an openhearted exploration of unity. Rumi’s words offer an all-encompassing spirituality relevant to our times: being present in the moment, finding the holiness in laughter. Translator Coleman Barks says: “Rumi was without boundaries. He would say that love is the religion and the universe is the book, that experience as we’re living it is the sacred text that we study.” Composer’s Note The poetry of Rumi has provided inspiration for many composers, and I have to admit I have been delighted to fall under its spell, thanks to the compelling translations of Coleman Barks. The poems are not only musical in their language and flow, but have music in them: “we have fallen into the place / where everything is music.” One of his recurring messages is that of staying in the immediate moment, and finding jeweled meaning in what we have at each breath of our existence. To me, this also reflects the experience of music: we can’t stop music’s time, but we can intensely experience each moment, each phrase, each individual piece, each composer’s work. These pieces unfold as a parallel stream to the words, where I’ve tried to reflect the flow and capture the movement of each poem. I began the set in 2009. Where Everything Is Music was written as a short celebratory piece for Volti’s 30th anniversary. It was intended as a stand-alone work, and I managed to leave it that way for some time. However, the pull of Rumi’s poetry was strong. The Waterwheel was written in 2010, for no other reason than the fact that I needed a break between other, longer instrumental pieces that were on my composing schedule. The other pieces were all written in the spring of 2011. I think of these as similar to a book of madrigals, where one, several or all might be performed. 1. Where Everything Is Music Don’t worry about saving these songs! And if one of our instruments breaks, it doesn’t matter We have fallen into the place where everything is music. Strumming and flute notes rise into the atmosphere, and even if the whole world’s harp should burn up, there will still be hidden instruments playing. So the candle flickers and goes out, We have a piece of flint, and a spark. This singing art is sea foam, The graceful movements come from a pearl somewhere on the ocean floor. Poems reach up like spindrift, the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting! They derive from a slow and powerful root that we can’t see. Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out. 2. Special Plates Notice how each particle moves. Notice how everyone has just arrived here from a journey. Notice how each wants a different food. Notice how the stars vanish as the sun comes up, and how all streams stream toward the ocean. Look at the chefs preparing special plates for everyone, according to what they need. Look at this cup that can hold the ocean. Look at those who see the face. Look through Shams’ eyes into the water that is entirely jewels. 3. The Waterwheel Stay together, friends. Don’t scatter and sleep. Our friendship is made of being awake. The waterwheel accepts water and turns and gives it away, weeping. That way it stays in the garden, whereas another roundness rolls through a dry riverbed looking for what it thinks it wants. Stay here, quivering with each moment like a drop of mercury. 4. Quietness Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now. You’re covered with thick cloud. Slide out the side. Die, and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you’ve died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now. 5. A Wished-for Song You’re song, a wished-for song. Go through the ear to the center where sky is, where wind, where silent knowing. Put seeds and cover them. Blades will sprout where you do your work. — Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks translation used by permission of Coleman Barks ... is knowing ... John Muehleisen (b. 1955) Commissioned for Volti by Pamela Langston-Cox and Thomas Cox (2011) John Muehleisen specializes in composing works for choir and solo voice. Since 1996, he has served as composer-in-residence and Artistic Advisor for Seattle-based Opus 7 Vocal Ensemble. John’s works have been performed by numerous ensembles including Bellevue Chamber Chorus, Choral Arts (Seattle), Choral Arts Ensemble (Rochester, MN), Conspirare, the Dale Warland Singers, The Esoterics, Musa Horti (Belgium), Northwest Girlchoir, Opus 7, The Richard Zielinski Singers, Seattle Girls Choir, Seattle Pro Musica, Vocal Arts Ensemble (Cincinnati), and the Louisville Orchestra. John was a finalist in the 2000 Dale Warland Singers Choral Ventures Program, and subsequently served as composer-in-residence for the Dale Warland Singers for their final season in 2003-2004. www.muehleisen.com Composer’s Note ...is knowing... has its roots in a visit I paid to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where I saw the exhibit “The Steins Collect,” a wonderful exhibition of paintings that Gertrude Stein and her brothers had collected after they moved to Paris in the 1920s. Several of her writings and poems were featured in the exhibit, and I immediately found my inspiration for the work I would write for Volti: a setting of several Gertrude Stein texts, made even more appropriate because she had lived in Volti’s “backyard” in Oakland during most of her school age years from 1878 to around 1891. Stein’s use of language in each poem is quite unique and each inspired different musical responses from me in terms of rhythm, form, texture, melody, and harmony. For me, the most fascinating aspect of Stein’s writing is her desire to create linguistic analogy to what Picasso, the Cubists, and other avant-garde painters were doing visually. The classic technique of Cubism consists of the simultaneous presentation of multiple visual planes or lines of sight, producing the effect of a jumbling of visual elements that forces the viewer to attempt to reconstruct the original image while struggling to accept the abstract, deconstructed image on its own terms. Similarly, Stein scrambles words and their grammatical and syntactical functions to such an extent that her poetry frequently sounds like nonsense to some readers. As in Picasso’s paintings, we struggle to make sense of Stein’s words, trying to reassemble them into some semblance of normal language and meaning while accepting them on their own terms. For me, Stein’s real genius lies in her ability to use language to force us stop trying to make sense of the words and to simply listen to them as sounds, even as music, or at least to listen musically. In this hyper-poetic world, we still find classic techniques and structural sensibilities and the use of words as musical motives. These elements were very much at the heart of what attracted me to these poems as sources of musical settings that seemed like a natural extension of where Stein had already taken them. 1. If you had three husbands If you had three husbands. If you had three husbands. If you had three husbands, well not exactly that. If you had three husbands would you be willing to take everything and be satisfied to live in Belmont in a large house with a view and plenty of flowers and neighbors, neighbors who were cousins and some friends who did not say anything. This is what happened. She expressed everything. She is worthy of signing a will. And mentioning what she wished. She was brought up by her mother. She had meaning and she was careful in reading. She read marvelously. She was pleased. She was aged thirty-nine. She was flavored by reason of much memory and recollection. This is everything. from Geography and Plays (1922) 2. A Waist A star glide, a single frantic sullenness, a single financial grass greediness. Object that is in wood. Hold the pine, hold the dark, hold in the rush, make the bottom. A piece of crystal. A change, in a change that is remarkable there is no reason to say that there was a time. A woolen object gilded. A country climb is the best disgrace, a couple of practices any of them in order is so left. from Tender Buttons: Objects (1914) 3. A Portrait of One—Harry Phelan Gibb Some one in knowing everything is knowing that some one is something. Some one is something and is succeeding is succeeding in hoping that thing. He is suffering. He is succeeding in hoping and he is succeeding in saying that that is something. He is suffering, he is suffering and succeeding in hoping that in succeeding in saying that he is succeeding in hoping is something. He is suffering, he is hoping, he is succeeding in saying that anything is something. He is suffering, he is hoping, he is succeeding in saying that something is something. He is hoping that he is succeeding in hoping that something is something. He is hoping that he is succeeding in saying that he is succeeding in hoping that something is something. He is hoping that he is succeeding in saying that something is something. from Geography and Plays (1922) 4. Susie Asado Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. Susie Asado. Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. Susie Asado. Susie Asado which is a told tray sure. A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers. When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller. This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These are the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy. Incy is short for incubus. A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the old vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render clean must. Drink pups. Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has pins. It shows a nail. What is a nail. A nail is unison. Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. from Geography and Plays (1922) Paradise Shawn Crouch (b. 1977) 2009 / Revised 2013 Originally commissioned and premiered by Chanticleer, 2009. The original commission was made possible by a Chorus America Award through the Dale Warland Singers Fund for New Choral Music at the American Composers Forum. Revised for Volti, 2013. Shawn Crouch, composer and conductor, has had his works performed and commissioned by ensembles in the United States, Canada and Europe including the Cleveland Orchestra, American Modern Ensemble, Cantori New York, California E.A.R. Unit, Chanticleer, Del Sol String Quartet, the Esoterics, eighth blackbird, the Lunar Ensemble, Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, newEar Contemporary Ensemble, Plexure Trio, Phoenix Chorale, Prism Quartet, San Francisco Choral Artists, Santa Fe Chorale, Seraphic Fire, the Yesaroun’ Duo, and Volti. He has received awards from such institutions as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The American Prize, ASCAP, BMI, Yale University, Society of Composers Inc., Meet the Composer and the Percussive Arts Society. He is the inaugural recipient of the Dale Warland Singers Commissioning Award given by Chorus America and the American Composers Forum. Shawn Crouch has studied composition with Martin Bresnick, Ezra Laderman, Lansing McCloskey and Malcolm Peyton and conducting with Marguerite Brooks and Leo Wanenchak. He has been the Wallace-Readers Digest Composition Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center as well as a composition fellow at the Norfolk Music Festival. Shawn received his B.Mus. from the New England Conservatory, his M.Mus. from the Yale School of Music, and his D.M.A. from the University of Miami Frost School of Music. Shawn Crouch is currently Assistant Professor of Practice of Composition and Theory at the University of Miami, where he is artistic director of the White Ibis New Music Ensemble. He has served as the Founding Director of Seraphic Fire’s Miami Choral Academy, and has taught at the Walden School for Young Musicians and Hunter College Campus Schools in New York City. Shawn Crouch’s music has been commercially recorded and released by many professional ensembles. His music is published by G. Schirmer and HoneyRock Publishing. Dr. Crouch proudly serves on the Board of Directors for Chorus America and is a BMI composer. www.shawncrouchmusic.com Composer’s Note Paradise is based on the poems of American poet Brian Turner, an Iraq War veteran, whose moving accounts of the war are set alongside the poetry of the 12th Century Persian poet Hafez as translated and selected by poet Sholeh Wolpé. Having a brother who served two tours of duty in Iraq in the Marine Corps, I was drawn to the visceral images of war that Turner paints with his text. In the music I emphasize the lyrical qualities and changing colors of the poems through arching musical lines that often layer upon themselves. The composition brings the listener from descriptions of the desert landscape, to Turner’s philosophy on taking another’s life, and comes to a close at a place of spiritual acceptance. In between many of the movements lie choral settings of Hafez’s poems. They are a calling to the modern poet, like ancient spirits speaking through the battered landscape. Movement IV of Paradise, “Lullaby” is published by G. Schirmer on the Dale Warland Choral Series. Chant Do not despair, your lost Joseph shall return to Canaan, this house of sorrows will be a paradise once more. I. Mihrab They say the Garden of Eden blossomed here long ago, and this is all that remains, wind scorpions and dust, crow-like jays cawing their raspy throats in memory of a song, a ghost of beauty lingering in the shadow’s fall. Chorale 1 If you tread barren deserts, your steps towards the House of God Thorns may prick and punish your feet. Though the journey is full of danger and the destination far, Take heart. There is no road without an end, do not despair. II. A Soldier’s Arabic The word for Love, habib, is written from right to left, starting where we would end it and ending where we might begin. Where we would end a war another might take as a beginning, or as an echo of history, recited again. Speak the word for death, maut, and you will hear the cursives of the wind driven into the veil of the unknown. This is a language made of blood. It is made of sand, and time. To be spoken, it must be earned. Chorale 2 O heart, if death’s savage flood threatens to ravage all existence Do not despair, Noah is your ship’s captain. III. Sadiq It should make you shake and sweat, nightmare you, strand you in a desert of irrevocable desolation, the consequences seared into the vein, no matter what adrenaline feeds the muscle its courage, no matter what god shines down on you, no matter what crackling pain and anger you carry in your fists, my friend, it should break your heart to kill. Chorale 3 O grieving heart, you will see a better day, do not lose yourself This senseless mind shall find its home IV. Lullaby Akbar stirs the chai, then carries his sleeping four-year-old, Habib, to bed under glow-in-the-dark stars arranged on the ceiling. Late at night when gunfires frighten them both, Habib cries for his father, who tells him It’s just the drums, a new music, and the tracery of lights in the sky he retraces on the ceiling, showing the boy how each bright star travels from his dark place, to the other. V. Mihrab If I say the desert is an afterimage, that birds serenade us, that the moon is the heart of God shining in heaven, Arise, there is life’s spring upon the meadow’s throne that if there is a heaven it is Arise, countless shrouded games are at play so deep within us we are overgrown, that the day brings only a stripping of leaves and by sundown we are exhausted, Arise, if you cannot fathom the invisible world then let it be, because if there is a definition in the absence of light, Arise, a flower umbrella shall spread and crown your head, and if a ghost can wander amazed through the days of its life, then it is me, Oh heart, arise here in the Garden of Eden, where it is impossible to let go You, in poverty and seclusion of these dim nights, of what we love and what we’ve lost, So long as God is on your breath, arise here, where the breath of God is our own. Brian Turner, “A Soldier’s Arabic”,“Sadiq”,“The Al Harishma Weapons Market”, and “Mihrab” from Here, Bullet. Copyright © 2005 by Brian Turner. Used by permission of the poet and Alice James Books, USA, www.alicejamesbooks.org. All rights reserved worldwide. Sholeh Wolpé, translation of “Do Not Despair” by Hafez, © 2013. Volti is a vocal ensemble of 20 professional choral singers. This music was recorded in five sessions between March 2012 and October 2015. Singers were drawn from the following roster: Soprano Kelly Ballou, Yuhi Aizawa Combatti*, Lauren Eigenbrode, Shauna Fallihee, Alice Ko, Cecilia Lam, Lindsey McLennan, Diana Pray, TJ Togasaki, Christa Tumlinson Alto Danya Clevenger, Monica Frame, Marjorie Gómez, Verah Graham, Sharmila Guha Lash, Joyce McBride, Rachel Rush, Emily Ryan, Colby Smith, Celeste Winant, Jessica Winn Tenor Ben Barr, Joshua Black, Joshua Diamant, Michael Eisenberg, Samuel Faustine, Paul Ingraham, Julian Kusnadi, Roderick Lowe, Jacob Thompson, Eric Tuan, Jeffrey Wang, Richard Yates Bass Jeff Bennett*, Joel Chapman, Sidney Chen, Peter Dennis, E.E. “Chip” Grant IV, Rob Lloyd Huber, Jefferson Packer, Philip Saunders, Cole Thomason-Redus * singers appearing on all tracks Robert Geary, founding Artistic Director of Volti, the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, and the Golden Gate International Choral Festival, also serves as Artistic Director of the San Francisco Choral Society. A champion of new music, he and his choirs have won numerous awards from ASCAP and at prestigious competitions in Asia, Europe, Russia, and North America. Geary has conducted in 26 countries, served as a clinician and guest conductor in the US, Finland, Denmark and Singapore, and recorded for Koch International, Swiss International Radio and Innova. His choirs have been selected to perform for the national conferences of Chorus America, the American Choral Directors Association, the Organization of American Kodaly Educators and the College Music Society. They have performed for radio, television, opera, symphony and music festivals nationally and internationally. Geary also has prepared his choirs for some of the world’s leading conductors, including Helmuth Rilling, Robert Shaw, Kurt Herbert Adler, Edo de Waart, Krzysztof Penderecki, Herbert Blomstedt, Dale Warland, Kent Nagano and Michael Tilson Thomas. Volti Staff Robert Geary Artistic Director Barbara Heroux Executive Director Mark Winges Resident Composer Sidney Chen Artistic Adviser Sue Bohlin & Paul McCurdy Rehearsal Accompanists Board of Directors Richard J. Collier President Kathy J. McMahon Vice President Mary Anne Shattuck Secretary Patricia Caspersen Treasurer Emily M. De Falla Richard Eigenbrode Elizabeth Jones Credits Produced By Lolly Lewis, Robert Geary, Mark Winges, Sidney Chen and Barbara Heroux Recorded March 2012 - October 2015 at St. Ignatius Church, San Francisco, CA Recording Engineers Don Ososke, Lolly Lewis Recording Editor Lolly Lewis Mastered by Piper Payne at Coast Mastering Graphic Design Amy Ray Photograph of Volti don fogg Photograph of Robert Geary Arif Hasyim Liner Notes Paul Ingraham, Barbara Heroux This is what happened was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. Innova Director Philip Blackburn Operations Director Chris Campbell Publicist Steve McPherson Innova is supported by an endowment from the McKnight Foundation. P & © Volti, 2017 All Rights Reserved. P.O. Box 15576, San Francisco, CA 94115 415.771.3352 www.VoltiSF.org