KITKA - MISSION AND HISTORY

Kitka is a professional vocal ensemble dedicated to producing concerts, recordings, and educational programs that develop new audiences for music rooted in Eastern European women’s vocal traditions. Kitka also strives to expand the boundaries of this music as an expressive art form. Kitka’s mission is accomplished through an Oakland-based home series of concerts and vocal workshops; regional, national, and international touring programs; community service activities; in-school programs; broadcasts; recording and publication projects; master artist residencies; commissioning programs; and adventuresome collaborations.

Kitka was founded in 1979 as an offshoot of the Westwind International Folk Ensemble. Kitka began as a grassroots group of amateur singers from diverse backgrounds who met regularly to share their passion for the stunning dissonances, asymmetric rhythms, intricate ornamentation, lush harmonies, and resonant strength of Eastern European women’s vocal music. Under the direction of Bon Singer from 1981 to 1996, Kitka blossomed into a refined professional ensemble earning international renown for its artistry, versatility, and mastery of the demanding techniques of traditional and contemporary Balkan, Slavic, and Caucasian vocal styling. Under the co-direction of Shira Cion, Janet Kutulas, and Juliana Graffagna since 1997, Kitka has grown to earn recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts, Chorus America, and the American Choral Directors’ Association as one of this country’s premier vocal ensembles. In addition, many international musical authorities consider Kitka the foremost interpreter of Balkan and Slavic choral repertoire working in the United States.

Kitka has deep ties to Eastern Europe and has traveled there to perform and collect repertoire many times. In 2002, Kitka joined Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares as “international guests of honor” for this world-renowned choir’s 50th Anniversary Gala at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria. In 2005, Kitka journeyed to Ukraine for a series of performances, international artist-exchange meetings, radio and television broadcasts, and research expeditions in rural villages. Kitka’s work in Ukraine created such a stir that the ensemble has already been invited back in 2007 for a performance in Kiev’s most prestigious concert hall, the Palace “Ukrainia.” For 2007 Kitka is considering invitations to perform at international world music festivals in Canada, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Wales, and Hungary. Kitka’s singers regularly conduct fieldwork in ethnic communities throughout America as well as abroad. Many of Kitka’s singers are also talented composers and arrangers who create original settings of songs they have gathered in the field.

In addition to original works by ensemble members, Kitka has presented premieres of new music by more than twenty-five composers. In 2000, Kitka received major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation to launch the New Folksongs Commissioning Project, which engages some of America’s most exciting composers to write new works for the group. New Folksongs commissions premiered to date include compositions by Pauline Oliveros, Chen Yi, David Lang, Linda Tillery, Janet Kutulas, Daniel Hoffman, Thilo Reinhardt and Roy Whelden. In 2002, Kitka began work on it’s most ambitious commissioning project to date: The Rusalka Cycle: Songs Between the Worlds, a new vocal-theater project directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang, with original music by Ukrainian composer Mariana Sadovska. Weaving old Slavic mythology together with contemporary themes, The Rusalka Cycle’s premiere performances took place to extraordinary public acclaim at Oakland’s Malonga Center in November 2005. A recording release, San Francisco performance run, and national and international touring of The Rusalka Cycle are slated for 2007 and 2008.

Kitka’s innovative sense of programming has led to dozens of other fruitful collaborations, ranging from a reconstruction of the medieval Carmina Burana pageant for CalPerformances, (Thomas Binkley, director), to work with Hollywood composers on major motion picture soundtracks including Braveheart, Jacob’s Ladder, and Queen of the Damned. Other collaborations of note include creating the role of the Greek Chorus/Trojan Slave Women in the American Conservatory Theater’s three critically-acclaimed performance runs of Hecuba (Carey Perloff, Director) for which Kitka received a Drama Critic’s Circle Award nomination; the creation of Women in Black, a multi-disciplinary work inspired by the international Women in Black Against War Movement (Thais Mazur, choreographer; Katrina Wreede composer) for which Kitka received an Izzie award nomination for best musical contribution to a dance program; and Songs from Mama’s Table, a celebration of the commonalties and contrasts between Balkan, Slavic and African American women’s singing traditions with Grammy nominees Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir. Kitka has released eight critically acclaimed recordings, six on its own Diaphonica label, most recently The Rusalka Cycle: Songs Between the Worlds (2007). In September 2005, Kitka published its first songbook, a companion to the Wintersongs CD. This publication is making a significant impact on the national choral field.

A frequent guest on national radio shows, Kitka has recently been featured on NPR programs such as A Prairie Home Companion, All Things Considered, On Point, West Coast Live and Performance Today. Last season, live Kitka concerts were also broadcast widely on Vermont Public Radio, the CBC (Radio Canada), and Ukrainian national radio and television. In December 2006 and January 2007, a public television special, Kitka and Davka in Concert: Old and New World Jewish Music was broadcast nationally.

A frequently occurring symbolic word in Balkan women’s folksong lyrics, Kitka means “bouquet” in Bulgarian and Macedonian.


MARIANA SADOVSKA

Mariana Sadovska has worked all her life in both music and theatre. Born in 1972 in the city of Lviv in Western Ukraine, she was trained from an early age as a classical pianist at Lviv’s Ludkewytch National Music School, where she graduated with honors. In her late teens, she joined Lviv’s Les Kurbas Theatre, one of Ukraine’s leading theater companies, known for its intensively physical performance style coupled with rich vocal work. From 1991 to 2001 Sadovska worked as a principal actor, composer, and music director with the Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices in Poland directed by Vladimierz Staniewski. Gardzienice has received worldwide acclaim for its virtuoso “anthropological-experimental” performances rooted in rugged fieldwork in isolated rural areas of the world. Like Les Kurbas’, Gardzienice’s work is a thrilling combination of physical theater coupled with ecstatic vocal ensemble work. Gardzienice's productions are the result of "expeditions" to places where traditional culture is still preserved today. With Gardzienice, Ms. Sadovska traveled throughout Eastern and Western Europe as well as to Brazil, Egypt, Japan, and the United States, appearing in the company’s productions of The Life of Protopope Awwakum, Carmina Burana and most recently Metamorfozy, which she co-created with composer Maciej Rychly using relics of ancient Greek music. In 1998, for her role in Metamorfozy she won the “Best Actress Award” given by the Polish Theatre Union. As the musical director of the Gardzienice Theatre, Ms. Sadovska has conducted numerous workshops at colleges, universities and arts centers around the world, including one with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, UK.

Since 1999, Sadovska has appeared as a collaborating artist in three Yara Arts Group festivals at La Mama Experimental Theater in New York. She first worked with Yara's director, Virlana Tkacz, on an international project in Ukraine in 1991, titled In the Light. As Yara’s Artist-in-Residence in the 2001-2002 season, she created the music for Song Tree (2000), Obo: Our Shamanism (2001), and Kupala (2001/2002), and also performed lead roles in these pieces. In New York, Ms. Sadovska also conducted special workshops on Ukrainian traditional Calling Songs, Winter Songs, Spring Songs and Late Spring Songs and gave solo performances at the Golden Festival and the Balkan Cabaret. In 2002, Kupala was remounted in Kiev, Ukraine, with a cast of Ukrainian and American actors. In conjunction with this performance Sadovska, in collaboration with Tkacz, organized the Veczornytci artist gatherings with indigenous singers in the Ukrainian villages Kriaczkivka and Svarytcevytchi.

In 2003, Sadovska created the music for the production of Bogoslaw Schaeffer’s "Qwartet for four actors" directed by Andre Erlen at Forum Freies Theater in Dusseldorf. Concurrent projects touring internationally included Callings and In the Beginning There Was a Song, both duo performances with the Israeli experimental vocalist Victoria Hanna. Callings and In the Beginning There Was a Song were presented to critical acclaim at Lviv’s Golden Line Festival, and subsequently toured Israel, Poland, and the USA. In 2003-2004 Sadovska co-created the multi-media performance piece Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors with Poland’s Quartet Jorgi and the Berlin-based film-maker Hiroko Tanahashi. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors toured the US in February, March, and April 2004.

In 2004, Sadovska composed the music for the theatre performance Sklavy, directed by William Docolomanski at the Svandovo Theatre of Prague. Her score, based on Ukrainian immigration songs, was nominated for the Alfred-Radok Award in Prague in 2005.

In the spring 2005 Sadovska was the recipient of a coveted guest artist fellowship at Princeton University’s (New Jersey, USA) Artist’s Atelier program, curated by Nobel Prize winning-writer and Princeton professor Toni Morrison. During her Princeton residency, Sadovska collaborated with New York theater directors Lars Jan and Roger Babb and created music for the mixed media production of Midsummernight.

In August 2005, Mariana Sadovska and Lars Jan were sponsored by US embassy, Goethe Institute and Aga Khan Trust for Culture to lead workshops at Kabul University and the Kabul National Theatre, and conduct ethnographic expeditions in the villages of Northern Afghanistan.

Also in 2005, she collaborated with the American women’s vocal ensemble KITKA and stage director Ellen Sebastian Chang to co-create and premiere the futuristic folk opera The Rusalka Cycle: Songs Between the Worlds. The project, supported by major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, the Creative Work Fund, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding, took its inspiration from Ukrainian folklore surrounding the liminal female spirits known as Rusalki. Sadovska began this project with a major Ukrainian ethnographic expedition with Kitka and Chang, which encompassed collaborative creative workshops and artist exchange meetings with acclaimed Ukrainian and Polish theater and folk music artists including Natalka Polovynka and the Majsternia Pisni Ensemble, The Les Kurbas’ Theatre Troupe, Choreographer Joanna Wichowska, Ensemble Drevo, Nina Matvienko, as well as rural field work in the Polissia region to witness the unique rituals Vodinnian Kusta and Rusalian Easter. Plans are underway to remount The Rusalka Cycle in San Francisco, Albuquerque, Chicago, and New York City in 2008.

In December 2005, Sadovska performed her new multi-media piece Without Ground at Symphony Space in New York City in collaboration with acclaimed New York musicians Anthony Coleman, Doug Wieselman, and Robert Rodriguez, with original video work by Lars Jan. In early 2006 she conducted series of Ukrainian polyphonic singing workshops at the Svandovo theatre in Prague and at the Pan theatre in Paris.

For the past fourteen years, Mariana Sadovska has traveled to villages in the Poltava, Polissia, Hutsul, and Lemko regions of Ukraine to collect folk songs and rituals. In each village she has cultivated deep relationships with elder culture-bearers whose lives, songs, and stories have inspired much of her recent work. In 1993 she initiated and co-organized the Hidden Territories project, a large expedition to Ukraine with an international group of artists, musicians and researchers, and co-produced a documentary film about the legendary Carpathian folk musician Mogur. In 2001, Sadovska co-organized the second annual Festival "Ukraine-Poland-Europe" at the Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices for which she brought village singers together with artists working on the cutting edge of contemporary performance practice.

Altmaster (Poland) recorded Mariana Sadovska’s vocal work for Gardzienice’s Metamorfozy in 2000. In June 2001, Global Village Music USA released Songs I Learned in Ukraine, a CD of Sadovska’s modern interpretations of favorite songs gathered from her Ukrainian village expeditions. Later that year, in collaboration with Radio Lublin (Poland), Yara Arts Group (USA), UNESCO, and other international sponsors, she produced Song Tree, a collection of polyphonic folk songs sung by village elders from Polissia and Poltava. In 2005 Evoe performing artists produced a second solo album Borderland featuring pianist Anthony Coleman, trumpeter Frank London, and clarinetist Doug Wieselman, percussionist Roberto Juan Rodgriguez, and bassist Brad Jones. Borderland recently won the prestigious Northern-Westfalia award, for “Best New World Music Album”. Diaphonica Records (USA) will release music from The Rusalka Cycle: Songs Between the Worlds in November 2006, and a CD of music from the play Sklavy is also currently in production.

Mariana Sadovska believes in music as a “living dialogue” between the performer and the listener. She comments:

“I do not sing found in books. Each song I sing was given to me by a specific woman. I heard the story of the song, learned the way it should be sung, and understood that a song can be the map which leads you to your life.” Creating her own innovative compositions and arrangements in dialogue with ancient traditions, Mariana Sadovska approaches each piece with a fresh and uniquely personal vision. In a 2001 review of her solo show Enchantment Songs, New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff commented: “Sometimes a musician has such an inborn desire to communicate that her message naturally becomes universal: it doesn’t matter whether she is singing soul or bel canto or folk. Such was the case with the Ukrainian singer Mariana Sadovska.… The responsibilities, protocol, and tradition of whatever style she is working in just vanish; she replaces them with pure vitality.”

ELLEN SEBASTIAN CHANG

Ellen Sebastian Chang is a director, writer and a creative consultant.  Ms. Sebastian Chang was a cofounder and artistic director of LIFE ON THE WATER, a national and internationally known presenting and producing organization at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center from 1986 through 1995.

2007 “Our Breath is as Thin as a Hummingbird’s Spine” collaboration with Nanos Operatta, inkBoat and Nils Frykaal of Sleepytime Gollira Museum; “Bird in the Hand” a new play by Anne Galjour in collaboration with Central Works; East Coast tour of KALI YUGA: The Age of Chaos, her 2006 collaboration with Gamelan Sekar Jaya and Indonesian poet Goenewan Mohammed.

2006 Co-created and directed “Isaiah 43:20” -- a noir remake of the Roman Polanski film “Chinatown” for the Department of Art and Social Justice USF -- this project was an investigation into local water issues and bottled water industry:  “Walkin Talkin Bill Hawkins”, about the first black DJ in Cleveland, Ohio written and performed  by William Allen Taylor; “self/the remix” written and performed by Robert Karimi Jumpstart,Texas and KALI YUGA: The Age of Chaos with Gamelan Sekar Jaya and Indonesian poet Goenewan Mohammed.    

2005 co-created and directed Dante's Divine Comedy with youth poets for the Youth Speaks Living Word  Festival;  staged the world premiere of “The Rusalki Cycle: Songs Between Worlds” with Ukraine composer Mariana Sadovska and KITKA; created and directed “Being Something”  for youth and seniors in collaboration with Opera Piccola and Stagebridge.               

2004 premiered  “Thieves in the Temple:  The Reclaiming of Hip Hop” and “Aya deLeon is Running For President” written and performed by spoken word artist Aya de Leon; staged the west coast premiere of the Philip Glass opera “Ahknahten” for Oakland Opera Theater(Joshua Kosman’s top ten classic events of 2004).       

2003  “KAWIT LEGONG: Prince Karna’s Dream”(after it’s successful premiere in 2001) with Gamelan Sekar Jaya and Shadowlight Productions at Cal Performances Zellerbach Auditorium;  and the final phase of "INVISIBLE LINES:  The Welcoming" a collaboration with Lauren Elder and the Oakland Housing Authority.

2002 “Strands”  a collaboration with the Asian American Theater and performance artist Naomi Quinones.

2001 Produced and directed “The Gentleman Caller” a soundscape location and radio production created for the front and back porch of a private home and  KPFA Radio;  "INVISIBLE LINES:  Groundbreaking" a collaboration with Lauren Elder and the Oakland Housing Authority;  and directed the final weekend of the Ethnic Dance Festival.

2000 Staged the premier of “When Sorrow Turns To Joy” by Jon Jang and James Newton, a tributary to Paul Robeson and Mei Lanfang with members of the Beijing Opera, at Zellerbach Playhouse and Walker Art Center, Minnesota.  She, also, directed “Game of Life” by Suz Takeda; “Close Encounters of the Third World” a collaboration between Latina Theater Lab, 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, Asian American Theater Company and Culture Clash; and “Don’t You Ever Call Me Anything But Mother” by John O’Keefe performed by Helen Shumaker.

1999 Directed the premier of “Walkin-Talkin Bill Hawkins by  William Allen Taylor for the stage and also produced this work as a documentary for LOST and FOUND Sound, The Millennium Radio Project for NPR.

1998 Directed the Word for Word project “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies” at the Magic Theater; Teatro Armonia with BRAVA’s youth program; “Mr. Backlash” with Allison Wright at Venue 9; Miya Masaoka’s “Dark Passages” at the Asian Art Museum and KLEZMER MANIA! for Cal Performances. In March of 1998 her Word For Word project “The Blues I’m Playing” by Langston Hughes toured France;  directed magician David Hirata’s premier work “Kanji by Starlight” -- a story of Japanese American Interment stories illuminated with magic.

1997, She was awarded third place in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Fiction Contest for her first short story “Little Miss Echo”; directed “Solo Pieces of the Quilt” original AIDS monologues by Danny Hoch, Octavio Solis, Erin Cressida Wilson for Sean San Jose Blackman; directed and performed in “Second Skins”, an environmental fashion show for the San Francisco Exploratorium; “STUFF” (Coco Fusco and Nao Bustamante); “Mission Possible” an anti-gang youth project for BRAVA! for Women in the Arts. Her radio play “G-O-to the D”(based upon her 1992 the stage adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's “The Adventures of the Black Girl In Search Of God”) was broadcast by NPR’s SOUND PRINT.

Ms. Sebastian Chang began her career as a lighting designer and technician.  She served as the technical director and lighting designer for The Blake Street Hawkeyes from 1979-1983. Her directorial work is highly influenced by this love of and affinity with the movement, color and temperature of light and shadow.

In 1982 her directorial and writing debut called “Your Place Is No Longer With Us” was created in a Victorian mansion and told the story of the coming of age of a ten year old biracial girl; a meal of black-eyed peas, mustard greens and corn bread cooked throughout the performance and was served to the audience at the end of the play. “Your Place Is No Longer With Us”  is published in West Coast Plays and won a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for New Directions in Theater.  This work was the beginning of Ms. Sebastian Chang’s ongoing interest in children, exploring dialogues in regard to race in particular mix race issues and strong female identified images. “Your Place...” was also one of many location/environmental works created by Ms.  Chang. Other notable pieces were “The Stairs”  for the Galleria de la Raza; “Building Images”  staged for the American Institute of Architects at the Vaillancourt Fountain Justin Herman Plaza and “The Surreal Meal”  also in a private home in San Francisco.

In 1988 her work based upon the life and work of Zora Neal Hurston called “The Sanctified Church” premiered in San Francisco at Life on The Water and was later rewritten as a smaller touring production called “Sanctified” with productions in LA, Wash.DC, Miami and Texas.

Ms. Sebastian Chang has had successful working collaborations with such solo performers as Awela Makeba(“Rage-Is not a one day thing”), Anne Galjour(“Okra”), Whoopi Goldberg(“Moms”), Holly Hughes(“No Trace of The Blonde”), Leonard Pitt(“Ned”), Bill Talen(“The Shape”) and Charlie Varron(consultation “Rush Limbaugh in Night School”).

She has worked as an Artist in Residence and teacher, developing original stage productions at the following high schools in the Bay Area: “The Last Word”, Skyline High; “ICU: the children’s ward” Mt. Tamalpais;  “The Hunger Artist”  Redwood;  “Hot Soup” The Urban School of SF and in Richmond High teaching dramatic writing and an acting workshop.  She worked at The Urban School of San Francisco teaching technical theater and managing Gumption Theater from 1982 through 1986.

Ms. Sebastian Chang is a recipient of funding from the NEA, Ford, Rockefeller and LEF Foundations, Arts Matter of New York, Zellerbach Family Fund and the California Arts Council.