Volti: Winter Music

Volti sings the poetry of Rumi, Dunbar, and Merwin. Kick off the holiday choral concert season with no "Messiah," guaranteed, as we explore the aspects of the divine and the timeless in even the most mundane moments of our lives.  In "The Garden of Paradise," Shawn Crouch looks at contrasting views of the "cradle of civilization" through the poetry of Brian Turner, an Iraq War veteran from California, intermingled with poems of the 13th Century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi. Mark Winges finds inspiration in the same poet in his "Canticles of Rumi," commissioned by Volti and receiving its premiere on this concert. Ian Freebairn-Smith uses "Season," a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin, to evoke the nostalgic power of revisiting a house once lived in. Also on the program is "Songs of Lowly Life," Stacy Garrop's settings of texts of the seminal African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, a new work commissioned by Volti.