Volti is a 16- to 24-person professional vocal ensemble based in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, focused on the commissioning and performance of new music. In 2018, Volti became the first vocal group ever to have been awarded the Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming seven times.http://www.chorusamerica.org/awards.cfm#ascap2
, Chorus America website, list of Past Adventurous Programming Award Recipients Volti has released four CDs on the innova label: "Turn the Page," "House of Voices," "This is what happened," and "the color of there seen from here," released April 26, 2019.

Volti also appears with the

Kronos Quartet The Kronos Quartet is an American string quartet based in San Francisco. It has been in existence with a rotating membership of musicians for 50 years. The quartet covers a very broad range of musical genres, including contemporary classical musi ...

on their

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in music. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious ...

winning recording of

Sun Rings ''Sun Rings'' is a Kronos Quartet project comprising pre-recorded sounds from space, images from space, music for string quartet and chorus composed by Terry Riley, and visuals by Willie Williams. It premiered 26 October 2002 at the Hancher Audit ...

by American minimalist composer

Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist music, minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notab ...

. Founded by Robert Geary in 1979 as the San Francisco Chamber Singers, the group quickly developed a mission: "to foster and showcase contemporary American music and composers, and to introduce contemporary vocal music from around the world to local audiences."www.voltisf.org/history.html
Volti website, History page. When the group turned 25 in 2003-2004, it changed its name to Volti, a reference to the Italian musical instruction "volti subito" meaning "turn quickly."http://www.sfcv.org/arts_revs/music_news_8_19_03.php
San Francisco Classical Voice, 19 August 2003 "SF Chamber Singers Turn to Volti, `Facing Forward'"http://www.berkeleydaily.org/issue/2004-04-23/article/18722
Berkeley Daily Planet, 23 April 2004 "Notes From The Underground: Twenty-Five Years Singing the Same New Song" 2019 marks the ensemble's 40th anniversary.http://www.sfcv.org/content/singing-without-net
San Francisco Classical Voice, 05/15-17/2009, Singing Without a Net Volti performs two to three concert series each season in venues throughout the Bay Area. Volti has appeared at the Switchboard and SoundWave festivals of new music, has collaborated with many Bay Area new music groups including the

, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and ODC/Dance, and has supported major orchestras in the performance of new music, including the

Seattle Symphony The Seattle Symphony is an American orchestra based in Seattle, Washington. Since 1998, the orchestra is resident at Benaroya Hall. The orchestra also serves as the accompanying orchestra for the Seattle Opera. History Beginnings The orchest ...

and

Philharmonia Orchestra The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI Classics, EMI. Among the conductors who worked with the orchestra in its early years were Rich ...

under

Esa-Pekka Salonen Esa-Pekka Salonen (; born 30 June 1958) is a Finnish conducting, conductor and composer. He is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Sw ...

. Volti also sponsors the Choral Arts Laboratory, a commissioning and residency program for American composers under age 35, and the Choral Institute for high school students.

Outreach

Choral Institute

Volti's Choral Institute"Choral Institute page"
/ref> program brings together high school choir singers from around the Bay Area for weekend-long workshops at the CYO-McGucken Center in Occidental. The high school singers work with Volti singers, Volti conductor Robert Geary, and their own conductors to improve upon their choral technique and to prepare pieces for performance as a massed choir. The Choral Institute is offered twice during the school year; once for mixed choirs in October, and once for treble choirs in January. In 2009-10, Volti added a resident composer to the Choral Institute program. Morten Lauridsen worked with the students for the weekend intensive, and returned in May 2010 to play the piano accompaniment to his "Nocturnes" song cycle, sung by the massed choir of 120 voices. Other composers in residence have included Kirke Mechem, Stacy Garrop, Eric Tuan, Melissa Dunphy and LJ White.

Choral Arts Laboratory

Started in 2003, Volti's Choral Arts Laboratory
/ref> is a commissioning and residency program aimed at composers under 35. Each year, the composer selected for the program takes part in workshops to develop a piece, then works directly with the Volti singers in rehearsal, hearing how the piece sounds and getting feedback the singers. The composer may then consult with Robert Geary (Volti's artistic director)
/ref> and Mark Winges (Volti's resident composer)
/ref> throughout the year as they finish perfecting the piece, which is then premiered at a Volti concert during the regular season.

World Premieres

2002

The Mystery - Tamar Diesendruck (''Volti Commission'')

2003

American Shape-Note Tunes - Arr. Mark Winges (''Volti Commission'')
American Trio -

Kirke Mechem Kirke Mechem (born August 16, 1925) is an American composer. His first opera, ''Tartuffe'', with over 450 performances in nine countries, has become one of the most popular operas written by an American. He has composed more than 250 works in almo ...

Shui Diao Ge Tou / Song - Kui Dong
Songs for Dancing - Mark Winges (''Volti Commission'')
Two Yeats Choruses - Alan Fletcher (''Volti Commission'')
When Summer Shines -

Jacob Avshalomov Jacob Avshalomov (March 28, 1919 – April 25, 2013) was a composer and conductor. Early life and education Jacob Avshalomov was born on March 28, 1919, in Tsingtao, China. Note: Profile by David Campbell. His father was Aaron Avshalomov, th ...

(''Volti Commission'')
While I was walking, I heard a sound -

Miya Masaoka Miya Masaoka (born 1958, Washington, D.C.) is an American composer, musician, and sound artist active in the field of contemporary classical music and experimental music. Her work encompasses contemporary classical composition, improvisation, ele ...

2004

Image & Motion: A Choral Symphony - Mark Winges (''Volti Commission'')
Songs of Love and Loss (revised version) -

Paul Chihara Paul Seiko Chihara (born July 9, 1938) is an American composer. Life and career Chihara was born in Seattle, Washington in 1938. A Japanese American, he spent three years of his childhood with his family in an internment camp in Minidoka, Idah ...

Sonnets of War & Mankind - Stacy Garrop (''Volti Commission'')
Tautology - Peter Knell (''Volti Commission'')

2005

Ccollanan María -

Gabriela Lena Frank Gabriela Lena Frank (born September 1972) is an American pianist and composer of contemporary classical music. Biography Gabriela Lena Frank was born in Berkeley, California, United States. Her father is of Lithuanian Jewish heritage and her mo ...

(''Volti Commission'')
The Essence of Gravity - Robert Paterson (''Volti Commission'')
No More to Hide - Alan Fletcher (''Volti Commission'')
Sonnets of Desire, Longing & Whimsey - Stacy Garrop (''Volti Commission'')
Subandi -

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez (born 1964 in Mexico City, Mexico) is a composer and teacher. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado. Sanchez-Gutierrez grew up in Guadalajara and later studied at the University of Guadalajara, the Peabody Conservat ...

(''Volti Commission'')

2006

Blessings -

(''Volti Commission'')
O the Flesh Is Hot But the Heart Is Cold - Eric Moe (''Volti Commission'')
Open the Book of What Happened - Mark Winges (''Volti Commission'')
Sound Explanations - Eric Lindsay (''Volti Commission'')

2007

A Cricket Needs a Queen - Mark Winges
In the Black - Amy Beth Kirsten (''Volti Commission'')
Let Evening Come - Howard Hersh
The Locust Tree - Richard Festinger (''Volti Commission'')
Only one great thing - Cindy Cox (''Volti Commission'')
Phoenix Songs, Op. 28 - Toon Vandevorst (''Volti Commission'')
Sonnets of Beauty and Music - Stacy Garrop (''Volti Commission'')
Two Poems of Delmore Schwartz -

Wayne Peterson Wayne Peterson (September 3, 1927April 7, 2021) was an American composer, pianist, and educator. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for '' The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark'' in 1992, when its board overturned the jury's unanimous s ...

2008

Dancing in the Wind - Elliott Gyger (''Combined Volti & Piedmont Choirs Commission'')
Endless - Kurt Rohde (''Volti Commission'')
Words Become Unlatched - George Lam (''Volti Commission'')

2009

The Assembling Landscape - Mark Winges (''Volti Commission'')
The Ballad of James Parry - Ruby Fulton (''Volti Commission'')
Daglarym / My Mountains - Donald Crockett (''Volti Commission'')
On the Day the World Ends - Robert Paterson (''Volti Commission'')

2010

Where Everything is Music - Mark Winges (''Volti Commission'')
The Poetry of Earth
Joshua Fishbein
(''Volti Commission'')
Zeteo - Jean Ahn (''Volti Commission'')
Being (Two Poems of Billy Collins) - Yu-Hui Chang (''Volti Commission'')
Luna, Nova Luna - Mark Winges (''Volti Commission'')
Paghahandog - Robin Estrada (''Volti Commission'')
privilege - Ted Hearne (''Volti Commission'')

2011

Delusional Paths - Tom Flaherty (''Volti Commission'')
Painted Lights - Kui Dong (''Combined Volti and Piedmont Choirs Commission'')
after stephen foster - David Lang (''West Coast Premiere'')
Other Floods -

Tamar Diesendruck Tamar Diesendruck (; born August 3, 1946) is an American composer of classical music. A 1999 Guggenheim Fellow, she is also a professor at Berklee College of Music. Biography Tamar Diesendruck was born in August 3, 1946 in Tel Aviv, and she late ...

(''Volti Commission'')
voice (and nothing more) - Elliott Gyger (''Volti Commission'')
Genesis - Matthew Barnson (''Volti Commission'')

2012

Canticles of Rumi - Mark Winges (''Volti Commission'')
Songs of Lowly Life - Stacy Garrop (''Volti Commission'')
. . . is knowing . . . - John Muehleisen (''Volti Commission'')
The day on which the World didn’t end - Francisco Cortés-Álvarez (''Volti Commission'')
A lettrist, bottle, a fountain of everything I’ve ever intended to say, may it reach you on your desert island, that we might start anew - Ken Ueno (''Volti Commission'')

2013

Cancionero Amoroso - Armando Bayolo (''Volti Commission'')
Wear Flowers in Your Hair - Dan Visconti (''Volti Commission'')
Pacific Beach - Harold Meltzer (''Volti Commission'')
battle hymns - David Lang (''West Coast Premiere'') (with The San Francisco Choral Society, The Leah Stein Dance Company, The

Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir Piedmont ( ; ; ) is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the northwest. Pied ...

)

2014

Scenes from “Unremembered” - Sarah Kirkland Snider (''World Premiere of Chamber Chorus version'')
All Night - Mark Winges (''Volti Commission'')
Gratitude Sutra - Forrest Pierce (''Commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition for the BBC Singers, the Latvian Radio Choir, and Volti'')
Paradise - Shawn Crouch (''World Premiere of the Revised Version'')
A*R**T ACT - David Smooke
The Oath of Allegiance -

Melissa Dunphy Melissa Dunphy (born 1980) is an Australian-American composer best known for her vocal, political, and theatrical music. Born in Australia and raised in an immigrant family, Dunphy herself immigrated to the United States in 2003 and has since becom ...

(''Volti Commission'')
Sound From the Bench - Ted Hearne (''Volti Co-Commission with The Crossing'')

2015

Death With Interruptions - Kurt Rohde (a chamber opera adapted by Thomas Laqueur from the novel by José Saramago, presented in collaboration with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble)
Pandora's Gift - Mark Winges (''Volti Commission'') Made possible by a grant from the Gerbode-Hewlett Foundations Music Commissioning Awards Initiative
Bone - Ryan White (''Volti Commission'') Digression on No. 1, 1948 - LJ White (''Volti Commission'')

2016

It is possible these things do not exist - Amy Beth Kirsten (''Volti Commission'')
Graffiti Canons - Robert Paterson (''Volti Commission'')
From Ivory Depths -

Tonia Ko Tonia Ko is a Hong Kong composer. Based and educated in the United States and United Kingdom, Ko is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow and is a Senior Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Holloway, University of London Department of Music. Biography Ko w ...

(''Volti Commission'')

References

External links

Official Volti websiteSan Francisco Classical Voice Volti page
{{authority control Musical groups from San Francisco Choirs in the San Francisco Bay Area Musical groups established in 1979