Voci Presents

“Songs of the Bygone: Traces of a Vanishing World”

Sunday, May 15 at 7:00pm

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble, directed by Dr. Anne Hege, presents “Songs of the Bygone: Traces of a Vanishing World,” a wry, sometimes bemused exploration in song of forgotten ways of life and forms of communication.

The concert features the premiere of Bay Area composer Ann Callaway’s “On Music and Nature: Three Hopkins Settings,” based on three poems by 19th century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Callaway is the inaugural composer of Voci’s New Works Project.

“Songs of the Bygone” revives aspects of daily life from years past that are no longer part of our modern world, through works by J.S. Bach, Johannes Brahms, Gustav Holst, Gyorgy Ligeti, Otmar Macha, Arne Mellnas, Thomas Morley, Henry Purcell, Jeno von Takacs, Gwyneth Walker and Alice Parker.

Taking a musical journey to an unplugged past, Voci perform laments from the 1600s, asking “What can we poor Females do?”; songs from the 1800s about “bartered brides” and prairie grandmas who raised 21 kids and “punched the dough”; plus contemporary satires suggesting that “women should be pedestals, moving to the motion of men.”

The Ensemble sings to the communications of yesteryear--invoking the rain, calling across mountaintops while herding the cows, finding oneself separated from family as death approaches, with only a raven to send word -- and brings back proverbs of Swedish trolls and elegies to dying crafts.

Sunday, May 15, 7:00 PM

Piedmont Center for the Arts

801 Magnolia Avenue

Piedmont

Saturday, May 21, 2:00 PM

St. Perpetua Catholic Parish

3454 Hamlin Road

Lafayette

TICKETS:

$25 suggested donation at the door

$20 advance

$15 students

FREE for children between 6 and 12

Available at the door or online at:

http://www.vocisings.org/tickets.php

Ticket information: (510) 531-8714