Volti Announces All-Virtual Season

Volti singers at Gualala Arts Center (photograph taken in January of 2019, from the Photos archive on the Volti Web site)

Volti, the Bay Area’s a cappella vocal ensemble that specializes in new music, has announced that its 42nd season will be held entirely in cyberspace. Those familiar with the group and its Artistic Director Bob Geary know that its motto is “singing without a net;” and that reputation will be maintained by offering four mini-concerts, each of which will feature a world-premiere performance. As of this writing, the composers for those offerings have been finalized: Anne Hege, Danny Clay, Joel Chapman, and Pamela Z.

The offerings themselves will be “cocktail-hour mini-concerts,” all of which will take place on Saturdays at 5:30 p.m. There will be no charge for admission, and each performance will be less than an hour in duration. As of this writing, only the dates for the remainder of this year have been finalized. These will account for the first two of the contributing composers as follows:

November 21: This will be the live-streamed premiere of Hege’s “it sounds like all my dreams.” The piece seems to have been conceived with “cyberspace media” in mind. The composition is in nine sections, scored for SSATTB soloists singing with a recording of an SATB chorus. The performance will also include pre-recorded video art elements. Hege views the composition as an experiment concerned with “how life fits together in this new normal when music is made without hearing one another, when I am home every evening to listen to the crickets with my daughters, and when my need to be musical is often thwarted by distance and the limits of technology.”

December 19: Danny Clay has not yet provided a title for his new composition. Some readers may recall that, in May of 2018, Volti performed Playbook Choruses, which Clay composed on a commission from the ensemble. This consisted of three pieces for which Clay provided strategic guidelines, rather than explicit instructions. His new piece will continue his interest in improvisational musical activities, taking the form of a virtual “game show,” in which members of the chorus will have to take on a series of musical challenges.

While these performances will be free, patrons should consider making a donation. Volti has created a Tix Web page through which reservations for attendance must be made, regardless of whether or not a donation is included. After the reservation has been processed, electronic mail will be sent providing the link to the Web page through which the video will be streamed. As of this writing, the Web page has only been set up for admission to the November 21 concert. Presumably, it will be updated for the December concert in the near future.