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- The Vine

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- Wintersongs

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"Kitka's songs are hauntingly beautiful, simple, yet otherworldly. The rich sound these women produce resonates as if energized by the universe itself." —San Francisco Bay Times

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.

Our mission is accomplished through a busy itinerary of live performances, including an Oakland-based 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.

History

Now approaching its 25th Anniversary season, Kitka was founded in 1979 as an offshoot of the Westwind International Folk Ensemble. Kitka began as a grassroots group of amateur singers from diverse ethnic and musical backgrounds who met regularly to share their passion for the stunning dissonances, asymmetric rhythms, intricate ornamentation, lush harmonies, and resonant strength of Eastern European women's vocal music. Under the artistic direction of vocalist, composer, and conductor Bon Brown Singer from 1981 to 1996, Kitka blossomed into a refined professional ensemble earning international renown for its artistry, versatility, and mastery of the demanding techniques of Balkan and Slavic vocal styling.

Under the co-direction of long-time ensemble members Shira Cion, Juliana Graffagna, and Janet Kutulas since 1997, Kitka has grown to earn recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio, and Chorus America as one of this country's premier vocal ensembles. In addition, many Eastern European musical authorities have come to consider Kitka the foremost interpreter of Balkan and Slavic Choral repertoire working in the United States. In June of 2002, Kitka performed as "international guests of honor" at the 50th Anniversary Jubilee concert of the world-renowned Bulgarian Women's Choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares at the Bulgarian National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria.

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, Georgia, Ukraine, Greece, Belarus, and Turkey. 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 addition, in the last four seasons, the group has presented premieres of new music by nineteen Eastern European, American, and international composers as part of the New Folksongs Commissioning Project. New Folksongs was launched in the year 2000, when the group received major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation to commission seven American composers (Pauline Oliveros, David Lang, Linda Tillery, Janet Kutulas, Chen Yi, Daniel Hoffman, and Roy Whelden) to write original new works to be sung by KITKA in the 2000 through 2003 seasons. Subsequent New Folksongs premieres have included Embracing Global Peace by Lebanese composer Marcel Khalife, a collaborative work featuring KITKA, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Arabic vocalists and poets Marcel Khalife and Oumeima El Khalil, and a small ensemble of Chinese virtuoso instrumentalists premiered on September 11, 2003 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Currently, KITKA is developing its most ambitious commissioning project to date, a "futuristic folk opera" inspired by Slavic folktales depicting the Rusalki. Rusalki are powerful female mythological characters/nature spirits thought to be the spirits of women who have died unjust or untimely deaths.

KITKA's innovative sense of programming has led to dozens of fruitful collaborations, ranging from a reconstruction of the medieval Carmina Burana (Thomas Binkley, director) to work with film composers Maurice Jarre and Richard Gibbs on several of major motion picture soundtracks including Jacob's Ladder, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Braveheart, and Queen of the Damned. Other notable collaborations include: creating the role of the Greek Chorus/Trojan Slave Women ACT's critically-acclaimed production of Hecuba, starring Olympia Dukakis (Carey Perloff, director; David Lang, composer; Margaret Jenkins, choreographer), for which KITKA received a Drama Critic's Circle Award nomination; the creation of Women in Black, an multi-disciplinary work inspired by the international Women in Black Against War Movement (Thais Mazur, choreographer; Katrina Wreede composer) for which KITKA received an Izzie award nomination for best musical contribution to a dance program; and Songs from Mama's Table with Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir, a celebration of the commonalities and contrasts between Balkan, Slavic and African American women's singing traditions.Songs from Mama's Table has toured nationally since March 2001. Recorded highlights from the Songs from Mama's Table tour were released internationally in April 2001 on Linda Tillery's new album Say Yo' Business on the EarthBeat! Record label. KITKA has also collaborated regularly with the acclaimed early music group Ensemble Alcatraz, and the Jewish Music Ensemble Davka.

In addition to live performances, KITKA's voices reach a large broadcast audience through local and national radio appearances. The ensemble has been featured on a variety of nationally syndicated radio programs including Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion; NPR'sPerformance Today and Cross Roads; John Schaeffer's New Sounds; Stephen Hill'sMusic from the Hearts of Space; Angela Mariani's Harmonia; and the Putumayo World Music Hour. In December 2001, NPR produced an hour-long holiday special, Wintersongs with KITKA, that has been heard by millions through broadcasts on NPR and PRI (Public Radio International).

KITKA has released six recordings on its own Diaphonica record label, most recently Wintersongs, a CD endorsed by NPR as "a refreshing spin on traditional seasonal choral music… thoroughly marvelous!" In 2000, the Dorian label releasedCantigas de Amigo a collection of 13th century Gallican love songs performed by KITKA and Ensemble Alcatraz to great critical acclaim. Upcoming recording projects include Lulay, a collection of lullabies and children's songs slated for release on Diaphonica in the winter of 2004/05), and The Rusalka Cycle (slated for release on Diaphonica in the spring of 2006).

Since 1987, Kitka has been on the California Arts Council's Roster of Touring Artists. In recent years the ensemble has toured extensively throughout the United States, appearing throughout Northern and Southern California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Washington, DC, and Wisconsin. Upcoming tours include return engagements in many of these states and first-time appearances in Hawaii, Alaska, New Jersey, Connecticut, Nevada, Arizona, Indiana, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Georgia. In addition, concert and research tours are planned in Hungary in the summer of 2005, and in Ukraine in the Summer of 2006.

KITKA's programs have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the Alameda County Art Commission, the City of Oakland Department of Craft and Cultural Arts, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Fund, the Clorox Foundation, The Crosby Family Foundation, The Merowitz Foundation, the Koret Foundation, the Fleishhacker Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Creative Work Fund, and a national network of individual supporters.

A frequently occurring symbolic word in Balkan women's folksong lyrics, "Kitka" means "bouquet" in Bulgarian and Macedonian.

Note that the songs on these 3 Kitka CDs are not the same songs as on their commercial CD releases. Not all the songs on Kitka's commercial releases are public domain or written by them (ie, the songs are owned by others) and thus could not be released on Magnatune. These songs were removed, and songs from Kitka's album "Voices on the Eastern Wind" replaced the removed tracks so as to provide full-length CDs even with the few songs that needed to be removed.