Robert Geary

Review: San Francisco-based composer Mark Winges writes music that is both familiar and strange; speaking to our oldest human qualities, beyond words... It embraces the versatility of the human voice: screams, whispers, whistling, muffled garbles, throat singing, speaking, and lyrical singing are all bound together into a tapestry of living, liquid a cappella sound. Think of the mind-blowing choral works of Penderecki, Messiaen, Takemitsu, or Ligeti's brooding score to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Winges' latest CD, Freed from Words expresses the abstract and the specific: Magic Strings places the listener in the swarthy world of a witch's sabbath; The Oh of Moon and Piano illustrates the moon and piano caught up in celestial dance; Haiku Settings unfold pithy sonic snapshots; Freed from Words uses phonemes and other pre-lingual vocal sounds. Composer in residence for the virtuosic San Francisco chamber singers, (three- time winners of ASCAP's "Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music") Winges seamlessly blends a wide variety of influences into an evocative choral world. Conductor Robert Geary (recently given the "Outstanding Conductorial Achievement" award at the International Children's and Youth Choir Festival) insures that all the singers involved, from children to adult, make the vocal gymnastics sound effortless. This recording will transport anyone with a love of choral music and an open ear.

Songlist: Magic Strings, Haiku Settings - Three Sets, Freed From Words, The Moon - Welcome, Wishes Night, The Oh of Moon and Piano

Review: This set of world premiere recordings showcases the stunning talent of Chinese-American composer Kui Dong. The grandeur of "Shui Diao Ge Tou and Song" is performed brilliantly by San Francisco's adventurous choir Volti, led fearlessly by conductor Robert Geary, who also presents the heartfelt "Let Frogs and Crickets Carry It On" with the Piedmont Children's Choir. The recording is rounded off by a stark set of piano works and the unlikely pairing of the Melody of China ensemble with the Del Sol String Quartet.

Songlist: Shui Diao Ge Tou and Song, Miniature V, Miniature VI, Miniature VII, Let Frogs and Crickets Carry It On, Spring (Re-Mastered), Summer, Autumn, Winter

Review: Volti, San Francisco's 20-voice professional chamber choir, has achieved national recognition as pioneers in new vocal music: they are the first and only chorus to have won ASCAP/Chorus America's Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music Award six times. This disc shows what the buzz is all about, with works by eight contemporary American composers, five of them commissioned and premiered by Volti, under its founder and artistic director Robert Geary. Opening the disc is the first recording of all four movements of Aaron Jay Kernis' stunning and hypnotic Ecstatic Meditations, named by the National Endowment for the Arts as an American Masterpiece of Choral Music. Also featured is the first recording of a major new work by Volti's resident composer Mark Winges, Open the Book of What Happened (2005). Other never-before-recorded Volti commissions include Kurt Rohde's Endless, a six-part setting of luminous, elliptical poetry by Jakob Stein (2007); Gabriela Lena Frank's startling, rhythmic Ccollanan Maria!, a multicultural mix of traditional Catholic imagery with ancient Incan ritual (2004); two of Stacy Garrop's Sonnets of Beauty and Music, part of her project to set 23 sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay (2006); and Eric Moe's O the Flesh is Hot but the Heart is Cold (2005) - about which all we can say is that any piece of music based on a poem titled "Baked Alaska: a Theory of" just begs to be tasted

Songlist: Ecstatic Meditations, Endless, Collanan Maria, Metaphor, O the Flesh is Hot But the Heart is Cold, Open the Book of What Happened, Sonnets of Beauty and Music, Two Motets