Current Projects 2010 Projects: Creating Worldwide Community through Song Please make a tax-deductible donation to Kitka today. Kitka’s work unites diverse languages, rhythms, melodies, and harmonies to cultivate a spirit of friendship, cross-cultural understanding, and compassion. Music brings people together everywhere — it has no boundaries. Our songs fuel our spirits, encourage sensitivity and give us strength. With your help, Kitka’s music will continue to connect and sustain us all.

RECENT PERFORMANCES: Singing Through Darkness Stories of Wartime Crystallized in a Dramatic Song Cycle Performance In June 2010, Kitka premiered Singing Through Darkness, an international vocal-theater work created in collaboration with Ukrainian composer/music director Mariana Sadovska and German stage director Andre Erlen. Singing Through Darkness contemplated the dynamic, shifting relationships that link history, memory, and the creative imagination, and the role of music in sustaining the human spirit through times of conflict. Four performances of Singing Through Darkness were given June 24-27: Thursday through Saturday, June 24-26 at 8 pm, and Sunday, June 27 at 4 pm at North Oakland's intimate and acoustically striking new performance space, Satya Yuga, located at 954 60th Street, 3 blocks East of San Pablo Ave. More Details READ A REVIEW OF SINGING THROUGH DARKNESS Cradle Songs: CD and Songbook Illustration by Catherine Rose Crowther The gentle rhythms, lilting melodies, and poetic texts of traditional lullabies give voice to the innermost psyche of a mother, and through these songs children are ushered to the gateways of language, culture, human connection, and dreams. Our 9th independent release, Cradle Songs and companion songbook features lullabies in Albanian, Armenian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Greek, Komi-Zyrian, Macedonian and Romanian. Learn More about Cradle Songs Song Routes in a New Land: Folk Song Master Residencies Bulgarian singer and choral conductor Tzvetanka Varimezova Folk songs are enduring expressions of cultural heritage, experience, and identity. The sharing of this music opens up channels of cross-cultural appreciation and dialogue in art and in life. 2010 marks the fourth year of Kitka’s Song Routes in a New Land project. We will work intensively with Tzvetanka Varimezova (Bulgaria), Kostroma of Russian House Kedry (Siberia), and Trio Kavkasia (Georgia) — all master folk singers and teachers known for their tireless work preserving and passing on endangered vocal traditions in their homelands and in immigrant communities in the USA. With these great artists, we’ll develop new repertoire, host community singing workshops, teach children in classrooms, and produce in-depth artist profiles on public radio stations. Then, we’ll invite you to concerts that showcase the fruits of our collaboration.

JULY 2010 Kitka in Germany: The Rusalka Cycle: Songs Between the Worlds Stefan and Baba Olga Tchudinowich, in Svarycevichi, Ukraine. We are thrilled to announce that we have been invited to performThe Rusalka Cycle at the Stimmen festival in Lorrach Germany in July 2010. In Slavic folklore, Rusalki are the restless spirits of women who have died unjust or untimely deaths. Fierce protectors and regulators of nature's cycles, they inhabit the waters, forests, and fields, luring people to them with their mesmerizing songs and wild laughter. In 2005, Kitka travelled to rural Ukraine with composer and performance artist Mariana Sadovska to gather Rusalka songs and oral histories from survivors of the Chernobyl disaster. In the cultural centers of Lviv and Kiev, we honed our physical theater skills working in collaboration with prominent Ukrainian and Polish actors and stage director Ellen Sebastian Chang. Our journeys in Ukraine led to the creation of The Rusalka Cycle, a vocal-theater work and CD that speaks to global human and environmental issues. Premiered in Oakland in 2005 to capacity crowds and widespread critical acclaim, we remounted the show in San Francisco and at The Revolutions International Theater Festival in 2008. We brought The Rusalka Cycle back to Ukraine in April 2009, with additional performances at th Giving Voice Fectival in Poland and Golbalize:Colonge 2009 in Germany. Music from The Rusalka Cycle has also been incorporated into a new film, Life in the Dead Zone, by Ukrainian-American filmaker Irene Zabytko. This chilling documentary chronicles a group of elderly women who have chosen to return to their contaminated ancestral homes rather than live out their last days as environmental refugees. The Origin by Grammy Award-winning composer Richard Einhorn The Origin (now available in iTunes) premiered in to packed houses, standing ovations, and rave reviews a few days before the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. The performers included Kitka, Anonymous 4's Jacqueline Horner, baritone Eric Johnson, filmmaker Bill Morrison, SUNY Oswego College Choir, Oswego College-Community Orchestra, and the Oswego Festival Chorus with Julie Pretzat, conductor. The libretto for The Origin, compiled by the composer and poet Catherine Barnett from the writings of Charles Darwin, focuses on the making of Darwin's world-changing classic, The Origin of Species. A joyful, often humorous piece, the Syracuse Post-Standard wrote, “Einhorn has created an imaginative work layered with profound insight...” Composer Richard Einhorn is best known for his brilliant Voices of Light, a work that has received hundreds of performances worldwide by the vocal quartet Anonymous 4. Einhorn feels The Origin is the most significant musical work of his career, and we all predict that this stunning creation will have legs (and maybe wings or fins), which will carry it to concert halls around the world in years to come. Concert Review: World Premiere of Richard Einhorn's The Origin Harmony and Dissonance: Community Singing Workshops Aurora Women’s Chorus Kitka will continue to share the joy of communal harmony-making by offering vocal workshops for all who love to sing throughout the new year. We’ll teach people young and old, amateur and professional, that raising our voices together gives us strength and hope. Learn more at Kitka.org