Julie, Janet and Briget at Koprivshtica

Janet, Briget and Catherine Rose in Basel, Letting our inner Rusalki emerge

Lörrach, Germany and Basel, Swtizerland

Koproivshtica, Bulgaria

• August 4, 2010 - Sofia
• August 5, 2010 - Pazardhik
• August 7, 2010 - Koprivshtica

Kaval Sviri

• August 4, 2010 - Sofia
• August 5, 2010 - Pazardhik

Oj Shope, Shope

• August 5, 2010 - Pazardhik - all of the choirs that have worked with Tzvetanka sing the classic Bulgarian song together. What a thrill!

http://www.badische-zeitung.de/fotos-snow-project-bei-stimmen-in-loerrach?id=33463515

And read a review of the performance (in German)

http://www.badische-zeitung.de/kultur-sonstige/musik-die-wald-und-wassergeister-besaenftigt–33477774.html

[English Translation]

English Translation

Badische Zeitung Performance Review: The Rusalka Cycle: Songs Between The Worlds performed by Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble at the Stimmen Festival.

Music That Appeases Forest And Water Spirits
The women’s choir Kitka at the Loerracher Burghof
July 22, 2010

Those who listen to their infatuating songs are inevitably lost, drawn down into the depths. Such is the legend of the Rusalky, the female nature spirits from Slavian mythology. Sometimes these mythical beings are being represented as young women with long, flowing hair, sometimes as half anthropomorphic fish women, nymphs, water nixes. According to legend, they live on the bottom of lakes or in the forest, only to emerge at night. In some Slavic regions there are still Rusalka ceremonies today, in order to honor these forest and water spirits, to call upon them, to appease them – and to protect oneself from harm.

Something from the original power of Rusalka songs now came to the “Stimmen” stage in the Burghof. The singers of the American women’s choir Kitka appear in their production “The Rusalka Cycle” as modern sirens, who bring back to life the beseeching intensity and hypnotic insistence of the Rusalka rituals. Musically as well, the Rusalka cycle moves between worlds, when the accompanying instrumental trio with Elisabeth Fuegemann on cello, Sebastian Gramss on contrabass, and Peter Kahlenborn on drum set, underlays the sometimes throatily raw, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes plaintive songs with soft bowed instrument sounds and a percussive rhythm framework.

In the scenic presentation by Andre Erlen, the vocal ensemble from San Francisco conjures up the primitive, elemental forces of nature, the in-between-worlds, and the magical powers of femininity, which can sometimes extend into the demonical. The Kitka women let the audience take part in mysterious seeming ritual songs, the symbolism of which is not always easy to decrypt, the sound impact of which, however, carries an element of insisting, conjuring formulas. Sadovska has worked, one can hear that also in this Rusalka cycle, with traditional Eastern European vocal techniques, has let herself be inspired by how the women in the villages used to sing a long time ago: for example the “singing with open throat”, a chant that carries far. Vocally, a wide field opens up in these Rusalka songs. The strong-voiced Kitka singers use the spectrum of the human voice enormously changeably: from throaty, dark sounds, ardent, powerful and emotional, from soft whispers, tender breathing and murmuring, to painfully mourning songs, in which the voices sound completely clear, gentle as the weeping of lost women’s souls, as if from the depth, from the bottoms of lakes and forests. Some songs carry an almost sacred, solemn aura. Then again the Rusalka invocations culminate into shrill screaming, an eerie hissing, wailing, screeching, ghostlike laughter and vocal eruptions of ferocious wildness and archaic fury. The singers seem almost witch-like, also transformed externally with loose, open, flowing shocks of hair and long orange, yellow, and red dresses, when they close in to the front of the stage in animal-like movements and break into a crescendo of wild voices.

Daring, luring, wild, beguiling, disturbing. Some scenes of this one-hour-long vocal theater project are charged with mysterious symbolisms and with meanings from cycles of nature, life, death, and the afterworld: women sit in the background and tightly hold on to cushions as if those were children. The singers form a circle, sprinkle themselves with water from a tin bucket, put their head into the bucket as if diving to the bottom of a lake. A wonderfully floating song of sacred intensity sounds and is broken up by a loud clanking. In between, the singers tell of their journey to Ukraine, where in the contaminated region of Chernobyl, the old women still sing their songs. And softly, the Kitka choir lets its strange-mythical Rusalka evocations fade away.

Published in the printed edition of the Badische Zeitung.
author: Roswitha Frey
translation: Annette Bauer

kitka-hasmik-email-900-1, originally uploaded by Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble.

One of Armenia’s leading folk singers, Hasmik Harutyunyan is world-renowned for her work with Yerevan’s Shoghaken Ensemble and for her mellifluous renditions of Armenian lullabies, one of the most ancient and evocative genres in Armenian music. Her quietly passionate interpretations of lullabies from historical villages across the Armenian plateau offer a mesmerizing glimpse at a lost world. She draws strength and inspiration from her ancestors in the province of Mush in Historic Armenia, especially her grandmother, Mafo (pictured on reverse), who sang to her as a child. In addition to songs sung by her family, Hasmik learned many of the lullabies in her repertoire from old women who had emigrated from Anatolia to eastern Armenia before or during the Armenian massacres of 1915, as well as from their descendants and old song collections. Hasmik Harutyunyan’s CD, Armenian Lullabies (Traditional Crossroads), was praised in a New York Times review as “The best Armenian recording worldwide.”

Joining Hasmik Harutyunyan will be the women’s vocal ensemble Kitka. Kitka, meaning “bouquet” in Bulgarian and Macedonian, is now celebrating its 30th Anniversary Season. Kitka began as a grassroots group of singers from diverse ethnic and musical backgrounds who shared a passion for the stunning dissonances, asymmetric rhythms, intricate ornamentation, lush harmonies, and resonant strength of Balkan, Slavic, and Caucasian women’s vocal traditions. The group has since evolved into a professional touring ensemble, earning international recognition for its artistry, versatility, and fresh approach to folk music.

SAN FRANCISCO
Friday, November 6
St. Gregory of Nyssa Church
500 De Haro St.
8 PM

OAKLAND
Saturday, November 7
St. Vartan Armenian Apostolic Church
650 Spruce St.
4 PM: Armenian Folk Songs and Dances Workshop
8 PM: Concert

FRESNO
Sunday, November 8
CSUF Concert Hall
Co-Sponsored by the CSUF Armenian Studies and Music Departments

The Rusalka Cycle
Hasmik Harutyunyan
from Yerevan’s Shoghaken Ensemble

The Rusalka Cycle
Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble
Photo: Sarah Small

Armenian Lullabies and Songs of Longing

“Bliss in a minor key…” — The Oregonian

This project is supported, in part, by grants from the James Irvine Foundation, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund,
The Clorox Community Foundation, and the City of Oakland Cultural Funding Program.

Everyone lined up with their fire buddies to jump through the smoke.

After jumping over the fire, many of us completed the purification ritual in the river. The whole afternoon was accompanied by song after song, each relating to the ritual at hand.

I will say that our trip last May is still a very fresh memory that comes back often when I’m least expecting it, to my taste buds especially, and this is a good thing considering that I must be the only person left on the entire planet who does not bring a camera with them.

To be traveling with the Kitkettes is a wonderful and amazing fun thing. In one single trip there’s the amazement of a self-cleaning toilet seat in a German “7-11″ restroom and the pleasure of tending the fire in the old haunted farm house in Poland to stay warm while rehearsing. To combine the aspects of vacationess and adventure with hard work and the magical contact with new friends that happens when traveling as musicians is the best and luckiest of lives.

There, I figured out how to add blog text! More soon (I sincerely hope).

Janet

I remember before we even left feeling a little overwhelmed, intimidated, but definitely excited. I wanted to really figure out rusalki, what they were, and I probably had some vague vision of a neat little end-product that I could wrap up as a show I knew, The Rusalka Cycle.

Our first week at Brzezinka was a much-needed time to open up, to the piece and to each other. My favorite memories are also the most uncomfortable, risking composure and safety, shifting relationships, on and off stage.

I think that creating experimental music-theater-art in the seclusion of a barn in the Polish woods definitely helped to bring out the honestly crazy woman in each of us.

The rest of tour was a whirlwind of wonderful people, bus rides, nights out, rehearsals, concerts, ice cream, coffee, laundry, phrasebooks, currency, and singing.

And a whole lot of walking, waiting, eating, drinking, hauling, but not sleeping…

So much hard work went into this trip, it is impossible to give credit everywhere it’s due. But I will say that the strength within this group is uncanny, perhaps even frightening.

On the plane ride back home, I thought through the show and wrote down every explanation or conclusion I had come to about the Rusalka Cycle, the music, the rusalki, the relationships, the stories, the personalities. Before we performed an abridged version at the Chapel of the Chimes, I reread my journal and realized there was new meaning still.

Though I crave some feeling of closure or satisfaction, I know that this piece is impossible to pinpoint and control. It is active and elusive by nature, and even now it’s still evolving. And that’s what I love about it. I am grateful for the questions without answers.

Produced by KQED Public Television, Spark is an award-winning program about San Francisco Bay Area artists and arts organizations — it is a weekly television show, an educational outreach program and a web site. Spark takes the audience inside the creative process to witness the challenges, opportunities and rewards of making art.

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