Événement

Voci Presents: Women with a Vision (Sunday, May 3rd)

Voci Women's Vocal Ensemble presents:

Women with a Vision: The Lasting Influence of Hildegard von Bingen and Nadia Boulanger

Sunday, May 3, 2015
4:00 pm
St. Perpetua Catholic Church
Lafayette

Saturday, May 9, 2015
2:00 pm
St. Mary Magdalen Parish
Berkeley

Voci Women's Vocal Ensemble, directed by Dr. Anne Hege, is committed to supporting new music, and music for and by women. This spring, we will combine these passions in our concert, Women with a Vision: the lasting influence of Hildegard von Bingen and Nadia Boulanger. The program will celebrate the roles these two great female composers have played in the history of music and the trajectory of new music.

Von Bingen stands as an emblem of female creativity. As a theologian, thinker, artist, and composer, she has inspired women over the generations as one of the few acknowledged female composers before the twentieth century. Nadia Boulanger has similarly inspired generations of composers as a formidable composition instructor. With over 600 students, including Aaron Copland, Quincy Jones, Virgil Thomson, Philip Glass, Ruth Anderson, and Astor Piazzolla many of whom refer to her as their greatest teacher she has guided and influenced contemporary western art music as we know it.

We will present works by both Von Bingen and Boulanger, as well as works inspired by them and composed by their students. We will demonstrate the breadth of their influence and the amazing ability of one person to change the course of music.

New Works Project

Our spring concerts will also include the premier of our first commission of Voci's New Works Project, an annual commissioning program launched in the Fall of 2014. Our inaugural composer, Ann Callaway from El Cerrito, will be composing a suite of three pieces for treble voices for Voci. We will premier one of the three this spring, and will premier the entire suite in the spring of 2016.

At the root of the New Works Project is a belief that new compositions arise most powerfully out of interaction with the voices, lives, and bodies of those who actually perform them. Callaway's commission will be workshopped in collaboration with Voci over a two-year period, allowing time for experimentation, feedback, and revision. Through this project, Voci hopes to help build a community of composers and singers dedicated to expanding the repertoire of new music written for and by women.

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