Wintersongs: Weathering The Storm

Kitka is an American women’s vocal arts ensemble inspired by traditional songs and vocal techniques from Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Founded in 1979 as an offshoot of the Westwind International Folk Ensemble, the group has evolved into an award-winning professional touring ensemble known for its artistry, versatility, and mastery of the demanding techniques of regional vocal styling, as well as for its innovative explorations in new music for female voices. The concert is scheduled for Saturday, December 21 at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $25 advance, $5 additional when purchased the day of. Tickets available at BrownPaperTickets and at Gualala Arts and Dolphin Gallery.

Kitka began as a grassroots group of amateur singers from diverse ethnic and musical backgrounds who shared a passion for the stunning dissonances, asymmetric rhythms, intricate ornamentation, and resonant strength of traditional Eastern European women’s vocal music.

The group boasts an overarching mission of cultivating local and global community through song. Kitka’s activities include an Oakland-based home series of concerts and vocal workshops, leadership of community choirs, regional, national, and international touring, programs in the schools, recording, publication, and broadcast projects, artist residencies, commissioning original works, community service, and adventuresome collaborations. Kitka’s wide-ranging performance, teaching, and recording activities have exposed millions to the haunting beauty of the ensemble’s exquisite and unusual repertoire. With deep ties to Balkan, Slavic and Caucasian lands, Kitka has performed, taught, and conducted cultural exchange activities in Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia, as well as in communities throughout the USA, Canada, and beyond.

The ensemble has produced 14 critically acclaimed recordings on the group’s independent Diaphonica label (most recently, Evening Star), songbooks, soundtracks for major motion pictures and independent films, and Kitka and Davka in Concert: Old and New World Jewish Music, a PBS television special.

• Praise for Kitka comes from all quarters. “Simply amazing harmonies. . . truly this is the most wonderful singing I have ever heard.”—David Crosby.
• “Kitka’s music accompanies my life. . .”— Meredith Monk
• “Kitka moved easily from tradition to tradition, as comfortable with the shrieks and howls of joyful celebration as with the quietest meditation, offering a convincing shout-out for a repertoire many know too little about.” — Joan Reinthaler, Washington Post.
• “KITKA’s songs are hauntingly beautiful, simple, yet otherworldly. The rich sound these women produce resonates as if energized by the universe itself, as if it were calling all live beings and still matter into togetherness and unity.”— Ching Chang, San Francisco Chronicle.

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Tickets

Tickets are $25 advance, $5 more day of performance.

All tickets available at BrownPaperTickets.com.

or call 1-800-838-3006.

To purchase in person, visit the Gualala Arts Center or Dolphin Gallery in Gualala.