Kitka, a vocal ensemble offering a landscape of sound and tradition from Eastern Europe, will visit the Black Bart Playhouse in Murphys at 7:30 p.m. Saturday as part of an international 10-city tour.

Advance tickets are $17.50, available at the Aeolian Harp in Murphys. Admission at the door will be $20.

Kitka is a women's vocal ensemble unlike any other. Its eight singers blend a contemporary sensibility with specialized vocal techniques from Eastern Europe that have been distilled over cen turies.

Their 10-city February tour, which began in Canada, features repertoire from their latest release, "Wintersongs," along with classic material from the Kitka catalogue hailing from countries like Bulgaria, Belarus, Georgia and Greece.

Many of the songs Kitka will perform on the tour have a winter theme, and several are also thought to have pre-Christian origins celebrating the solstice.

"Just as cultures outside Europe have integrated newer Christian beliefs with existing older nature-centered traditions, the same is true in Eastern Europe, giving the repertoire an earthy and exotic feel, offering a broader appeal than if it were simply liturgical music," said Shira Cion, Kitka vocalist and executive director.

"The music taps into something really essential and ancient," Cion said. "You think about the solstice and the nights, which are dark and cold and long. A lot of our songs either encapsulate that winter mood or bring a contrasting spirit of warmth, light, and jubilation to it."

Using only the pure unaccompanied voice, Kitka - which means "bouquet" in Bulgarian and Macedonian and is often used in Balkan women's songs - creates constantly shifting landscape of sound, pulsing with angular rhythms, where dynamics leap from delicate stillness to shattering resonance, and seamless unisons explode into lush chords.

The origins of these vocal techniques are in the fields and hillsides of the Balkans, Caucasus, Baltics and Slavic lands, where songs had to both carry across great distances or be used in intimate community settings.

"Much of Kitka's repertoire utilizes an 'open voice' technique that contrasts markedly from Western classical 'Bel Canto' style and more familiar folk style," Cion said. "The open voice has very forward placement, with lots of vibration in the mask of the face. The entire human body acts as a chamber for resonance producing a very big sound, rich with overtones. The sound is something like a 'belt' but more focused, penetrating, and shimmering.

"It is actually a style of vocalization that is much clos er to speech than to what we typically think of as singing," Cion said. "Vibrato is less part of the tone and more used as ornamentation. And there is a huge vocabulary of intricate ornamentation in each regional style,"

Kitka's material ranges from ancient village chants to complex contemporary works. The sound of their voices is exotic, both elegant and eerie. The melodies are hauntingly beautiful and the ensemble's seamless blend of eight very unique voices is extraordinary.

As The Oregonian newspaper put it, "Only a Slavic folk tune, after all, can express bliss in a minor key, agony in jaunty dance rhythms. The languages in which they sing are largely unfamiliar to American ears. It is exactly this unfamiliarity that is so riveting, as Kitka's sensitive precision lifts their work out of the merely musical into a universe beyond words, an experience that is primal and elemental."

Kitka's members, all Americans, have been conducting field research in Hungary, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, the Ukraine and Slavic communities through out the United States since 1979. 

In 2002, Kitka traveled to Bulgaria to perform as "international guests of honor" at the 50th anniversary gala concert of the world famous Bulgarian Women's Choir "Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares."

This summer, Kitka will appear at major international music festivals in Ukraine, Belarus and Hungary.

For more information, call 728-2852.