Kitka to Launch 35th Anniversary WINTERSONGS Tour, 12/04-21

Celebrating its 35th anniversary, powerhouse women's vocal ensemble, Kitka, has announced dates for its annual WINTERSONGS tour. Nine concerts are scheduled between December 4 and 20, 2014 at venues from Troy, NY to San Francisco, CA. The tour concludes in Oakland on December 21 with Kitka's wildly popular Wintersongs Community Sing, a free sing-along event organized around favorite selections from Kitka's Wintersongs songbook.

Wintersongs is Kitka's critically acclaimed winter holiday program showcasing seasonal music from a wide variety of Eastern European ethnic and spiritual traditions. This year the ensemble has expanded its traditional Northern California holiday tour to the East Coast, with Wintersongs concerts at venues from New York to Washington, DC. The last time Kitka performed Wintersongs in the nation's capital, National Public Radio hosted the group for a concert in its "Live from Studio 4A" series. NPR hailed Kitka's program as a "refreshing spin on traditional seasonal choral music...thoroughly marvelous."

Kitka's 35th-anniversary edition of Wintersongs features a broad range of spiritual and folkloric song traditions from Georgia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Russia, Armenia, Moravia and Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jewish communities. "These are rarely heard seasonal pieces that we've gathered through in-depth research, travel and song-catching over the last decade and a half," says Kitka's Executive Artistic Director Shira Cion.

Kitka will perform these pieces in both ancient, traditional polyphonic styles as well as in innovative new arrangements created by ensemble members and composers and arrangers from Kitka's ever-expanding global community. Program highlights include local composer
Peter Simcich's new setting of "D-oi Roag?," an old Romanian carol collected by Béla Bartók in the early part of the 20th century, a set of traditional Ukrainian carols and some original, multicultural arrangements by this year's Wintersongs project director, Kitka vocalist Corinne Sykes.

With Wintersongs Kitka invites audiences to embark on a journey of musical discovery that explores the joys, struggles and mysterious magic of the winter season through the evocative poetry and exquisite and unusual harmonies of Eastern Europe and beyond.

Kitka's 2014 Wintersongs tour begins on the East Coast Thursday, December 4 at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy, NY. From there the ensemble travels to Brattleboro, VT for a free concert at the Latchis Theater, and then on to the Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, PA, before landing in Washington, DC for two concerts at Dumbarton Oaks, December 7 and 8.

Kitka's Wintersongs tour continues in California Saturday, December 13 with a concert at Holy Cross Church in Santa Cruz. Additional performances follow at Arts at St. Bede's in Menlo Park, December 14; St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Oakland, December 19; and Old First Concerts in San Francisco, December 20. The tour concludes at Kitka's home base in downtown Oakland with their annual Wintersongs Community Sing, a free event held this year at Nile Hall in historic Preservation Park. At the Community Sing all present are encouraged to raise their voices in joyful harmony with Kitka in celebration of the season.

Most concert tickets range between $10 and $40, and may be purchased online via links at Kitka.org or by calling 510.444.0323. Kitka's concert in Philadelphia, part of a benefit for the Multiple Sclerosis Research Institute, has a suggested donation of $100. Tickets for their concert in Washington, DC will only be available for purchase to non-subscribers of Dumbarton Oaks' Friends of Music concert series starting on Friday, December 5. Tickets for this concert cost $54. Finally, Kitka's Wintersongs Community Sing accepts a freewill donation. For more information please visit Kitka.org.

Kitka's 2014 Wintersongs tour is supported, in part, by grants from the City of Oakland Cultural Funding Program and The James Irvine Foundation's Exploring Engagement Pilot Program.

About Kitka
Kitka is an American women's vocal arts ensemble inspired by traditional songs and vocal techniques from Eastern Europe. The Oakland, CA-based group has earned international recognition for its distinctive sound, exploring a vast palette of ancient yet contemporary-sounding vocal effects. The ensemble's earthy to ethereal timbres evoke an astonishing range of subtle to extreme inner states, instincts and emotions. Kitka's commitment to presenting traditional song as a living and evolving expressive art form has led to adventurous collaborations with some of the world's most exciting indigenous musicians and contemporary composers ranging from Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares to Meredith Monk. Currently celebrating its 35th-anniversary season, Kitka began as a grassroots group of amateur singers from diverse ethnic and musical backgrounds who shared a passion for the stunning dissonances, asymmetric rhythms, intricate ornamentation, and resonant strength of traditional Eastern European women's vocal music. Since its informal beginnings, the group has evolved into an award-winning touring ensemble known for its artistry, versatility and mastery of the demanding techniques of regional vocal styling, as well as for its innovative explorations in new music for women's voices. The ensemble's wide-ranging performance, teaching, and recording activities have exposed millions to the haunting beauty of their unique repertoire.

Kitka's ensemble includes: Kelly Atkins, Barbara Byers, Caitlin Tabancay Austin, Shira Cion, Rachel Gerstein-Tree, Janet Kutulas, Juliana Svetlitchnaia and Corinne Sykes.