$15 General Admission
$10 Students/Seniors/Members
VITAL VOX: A VOCAL FESTIVAL this 2-day festival explores the myriad power of the human voice in its solo and ensemble forms across a multitude of genres. It celebrates composer-performers in the vocal arts who stretch and expand the voice in new and original ways, continuing a strong contemporary tradition developed in the United States.
VITAL VOX is an annual vocal festival that had its premiere in 2009. It has brought together some of the most talented & creative vocalists in the Tri-State area, and has featured 19 projects and 30 vocalists thus far. The Vital Vox Artistic Directors are Sasha Bogdanowitsch & Sabrina Lastman.
IVA BITTOVA
Iva Bittová was born in 1958 in Bruntál in northern Moravia in what was then Czechoslovakia – and nowadays the Czech Republic. Both of her parents were musicians. Iva attended drama pre-school, specializing in violin and ballet. In due course she gained admittance to the Music Conservatory in Brno, often called the Czech Republic’s second city. She graduated in drama and mu-sic.Around this time she also featured as an actress in radio, TV and movie pro-ductions. Later on, while working full time in theater, she re-kindled her interest in playing violin, an instrument she had set aside in her younger years. After her fa-ther’s early death, she decided to follow in his professional footsteps as an in-strumentalist and by composing her own music. In 1982, Iva started studying with Professor Rudolf Šťastný, the primarius (first violin) of the Moravian String Quartet. In the intervening years the violin has become her life’s passion and the most in-spiring musical instrument in her professional life. Iva firmly believes that, as play-ing the violin places extreme demands on musicians, the composer’s work de-pends utterly on commitment and diligence. After living in the countryside near Brno for 17 years, Iva decided to relocate her personal and professional life to the United States. In the Summer of 2007, she settled amid the splendors of na-ture in upstate New York. Iva shares her Hudson Valley home with her younger son AntonÃn (born 1991) – also a dedicated musician and another chip off the Bitto block. www.bittova.com
“Iva Bittová is an extraordinary artist. Raw and refined, passionate and con-tained, she has the soul of a gypsy, the voice of a troubadour, and the mind of a genius.” -NPR/All Things Considered
TOBY TWINING MUSIC
Toby Twining
Raised in Texas, with family roots in country-swing and gospel, Toby Twining has traveled musically from playing for rock and jazz bands to composing and per-forming experimental music for voices with a fresh approach to harmony. He moved to New York in 1987, initially writing for modern dance choreographers who wanted the sounds of a new choral music. In 1991 he started Toby Twining Music, which performed in music halls and festivals across the United States and Europe. His recordings include Shaman (SONY, 1994), The Little Match Girl and Emily Dickinson’s Birthday Pizza on A Prairie Home Companion 20th Anniversary Album (Highbridge, 1996), Chrysalid Requiem and Eurydice (Cantaloupe Music 2002 and 2011). Twining’s instrumental music has been recorded by pianist Mar-garet Leng Tan and cellist Matt Haimovitz. He was a 2003 Pew Fellow, co-founder of Arts on the Edge Wolfeboro, and is a 2011 Guggenheim recipient.
www.tobytwiningmusic.com
Malina Rauschenfels
Cellist/composer/singer/dancer Malina Rauschenfels has collaborated with Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects, airelise, Doorknob Dance Company, Laura Flowers, and Dodge Dance, scored the ï¬ lm LineAge, and composed for C4, In Extensio, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, Janus Trio, and Rebecca Danard. Rauschen-fels was a 2008 Bang on a Can
Composition Fellow.
“a wide range of vocal techniques and sounds”¦energetic counter-point”¦colorful”¦mournful.” -New York Times
SOCORPO (Sasha Bogdanowitsch & Sabrina Lastman)
SoCorpo is a vocal duo whose music stretches the possibilities of the human voice and bridges gaps between contemporary new music, jazz, folk and
world music. Their work is often theatrical, incorporating music performance alongside movement, theater and multi-media. www.socorpo.com
Sasha Bogdanowitsch
Sasha is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist & composer whose work draws on influ-ences and techniques from contemporary new music, world music, early music and popular music. His work ranges from writing for chamber ensembles and multi-track tapes with live performance to songs and music for unique ensem-bles, such as gamelan and early music groups, to live and recorded music for theater, dance and film. Sasha has a Master of Arts from the University of Cali-fornia at Santa Cruz and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied composition and world musics, integrating the two into multi-movement, interdisciplinary performances. For the voice, Sasha often uses a language of sounds and has developed a way of singing that incorpo-rates his studies in world, early & contemporary new musics. He has composed music for numerous theater, dance & films, such as ‘On Becoming,’ an interdisci-plinary vocal theater work with Sabrina Lastman, ‘Grimm,’ a multimedia dance theater work, ‘Green Man,’ for vocal sextet, and ‘Hidden Circle,’ an interdisci-plinary work for voice, tape, movement & projections. Sasha is currently active performing solo and with vocal groups, SoCorpo and the M6 and has worked with numerous other artists, such as: SaReel Project, composer Lou Harrison, American Festival of Microtonal Music, Hesperus, choreographers Faith Pilger & Otis Cook, and Meredith Monk. www.sashabmusic.com
Sabrina Lastman
She is a New York based vocalist, and composer born in Montevideo, Uruguay. Drawing from jazz, Latin American and contemporary music, often integrating extended vocal techniques, Sabrina concentrates her work on jazz projects like the Sabrina Lastman Quartet and the creation of interdisciplinary new music performances combining voice, electronics, sound, movement and visuals -Dialogues of Silence, On Becoming (with Sasha Bogdanowitsch), River of Painted Birds-. Sabrina has performed at Carnegie Hall, Classical Guitar Associa-tion of New York, Blues Alley Jazz, Blue Note, Juilliard, New York University, City University of New York, La Mama, and Issue Project Room, among others. She has played with musicians such as Fernando Otero, Bakithi Kumalo, Tali Roth, Pablo Aslan, Emilio Solla, Pedro Giraudo, David Silliman, Sasha Bogdanowitsch, The M6, and Philip Hamilton. Sabrina was awarded grants by the Lower Manhat-tan Cultural Council (LMCC) & New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). Her album The Folds of the Soul was nominated by the Graffiti Award 2008 as one of the best jazz albums of the year. Sabrina has toured internationally playing in many musi-cal and interdisciplinary projects from Tango to New Music. She graduated from The Jerusalem Academy of Music & Dance in Israel. www.sabrina-lastman.om
“On Becoming: accuracy, audacity, intelligence, variety, originality and virtuos-ity. What else can you ask for? ” -Guilherme de Alencar Pinto , Brecha
“The duo’s fascinating vocal technique references classical Indian vocal tradi-tions, polyphonic Scandinavian vocal style, contemporary new music, and is even reminiscent of the Dadaist performances of Dutch vocal artist Jaap Blonk. …Their vocal delivery is charged with almost telepathic interplay…”
-Eyal Hareuveni, All About Jazz
