Judging by the programming choices of many of our major musical institutions, choral music belongs strictly to the past. Fortunately, forward-thinking music lovers can always turn to Volti. Under founder and Music Director Robert Geary, the San Francisco-based ensemble is one of the Bay Area's most consistent musical treasures, one that maintains high standards of excellence in the present while vigorously developing the repertoire of the future.
Sunday afternoon at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley, the group offered a splendid demonstration of its approach with a program combining works from its past seasons, recent Volti commissions, and a premiere of a work composed for its 2008 Choral Arts Laboratory. Conducted with care and precision by Geary, and sung to a tonal sheen by the 20-member chorus, the program closed the group's season on a decidedly high note.
Titled "Past, Present, and Future Adventures," the program included works by Ronald Caltabiano, William Hawley, Aaron J. Kernis, George Lam, Eric Moe, and Steven Stucky, and spanned nearly the entirety of Volti's 29-year history, from the eldest entry, Hawley's 1981 Two Motets, to the newest, Lam's 2008 Words Become Unlatched. Each work received a polished, energized, fully committed performance.
With the opening work, Stucky's 1996 Cradle Songs, Volti's voices made a thrilling first impression. The composer's settings of three folk lullabies elicited a pure, silken ensemble sound from the group, beginning with the hypnotic Brazilian song "Rouxinol do Pico Preto," followed by the gently insinuating Polish Christmas song "Lulajze, Jezuniu" and the lively, lilting "Buy Baby Ribbon" (from Trinidad and Tobago).
For sheer sonic beauty, though, the afternoon's high point came in two excerpts from Kernis' 1998 Ecstatic Meditations. The composer incorporates texts by the 13th-century mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg, whose writings, as the title suggests, blend faith, poetry, and sensuality in a fertile marriage. Kernis matched them with braided vocal lines, pulsing dance rhythms, and, in the second setting, a startling depiction of an intimate dance with God. The work calls for a spirited performance, and Geary and his singers delivered gloriously.
Georgia Rowe has been a Bay Area arts writer since 1986. She is Opera News’ chief San Francisco correspondent, and a frequent contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice, Musical America, San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, and San Francisco Examiner. Her work has also appeared in Gramophone, San Francisco Magazine, and Songlines.