This new musical repertoire of Vocalia Taldea connects three beautiful pieces of sacred music for women's choir and pipe organ.

All of the three pieces were composed for specific churches or cathedrals, or better said, they were created after the composers got to know the cathedrals and were profoundly impacted by them. Mendelssohn composed his collection of Drei Motetten op. 39 after visiting the Trinita dei Monti church in Rome and being profoundly moved by listening the singing voices of monks celebrating their religious service. Poulenc wrote his first sacred work, Litanies à la Vierge Noire, as a response to the strong impression caused in him by entering the Notre Dame of Rocamadour. Arnesen composed his Magnificat with the idea to be interpreted in the cathedral of Nidaros, the most boreal Gothic cathedral considered one of the principal historical monuments of Norway, even possessing the status of cultural icon.

Vocalia Taldea interprets this musical repertoire in collaboration with young organist Oscar Rodríguez Pastora and Bizkay soprano Nerea González.

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El núcleo central del programa lo forma la suite A Ceremony of Carols del compositor británico Benjamin Britten. Se trata de un canto a la vida ante la llegada del Mesías, cuajado de ritmos diversos, sencillas melodías y un punto de nostalgia. Las nueve partes de esta pieza dibujan paisajes en los que el coro y el arpa transitan desde la alegría por la llegada del año nuevo hasta la fría y oscura noche de invierno, pasando por la batalla contra Satanás que supone el nacimiento del niño Dios. Un solemne canto procesional que inicia y cierra la obra contribuye a crear una metáfora musical del ciclo vital, el eterno retorno y el equilibrio entre muerte y vida.

Al abordar esta emblemática pieza, Vocalia Taldea quiso complementarla con algo único, nuevo. Por ello encargó al compositor vasco Xabier Sarasola una pieza escrita expresamente para este proyecto, una suite para coro femenino y arpa que tomara como inspiración la famosa obra de Britten, suite a la que Sarasola ha llamado Urtats Elur.

El programa del concierto se completa con Vier Gesänge Op.17 , una exquisita colección de cuatro canciones para coro femenino, arpa y dos trompas del compositor alemán Johannes Brahms.

There is no Rose pretende por tanto ser un canto a la vida, a la ilusión y la esperanza ante la renovación de un ciclo, quizás hasta una metáfora para dejar atrás este último año de tragedia y enfermadas y renacer fortalecidas ante un futuro lleno de nuevos estímulos e ilusiones. Descargar dosier

The famous Gloria, composed by Antonio Vivaldi, is the backbone of this program. Although it is a piece frequently performed by mixed choirs from all around the world, recent studies suggest that its first version was written for female voices, specifically for the girls of the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, where Vivaldi worked as singing and violin professor in the first half of the 18th century. This musical proposal is complemented with three motets composed by Italian authors. All of them were Vivaldi's contemporaries connected with Ospedale as professors or composers. "Le muse veneziane" is an example of golden age of female choir composition, in which there was great competition among them to reach the highest levels of quality and virtuosity.

The In mulieribus program is a proposal of choral music written by and for women. It presents a selection of works of great complexity and size, composed by four contemporary composers of great relevance in the international choral scene. The concert opens with the Ave Maria by the British author Cecilia McDowald, a beautiful motet for a female choir that highlights the brave use of dissonance and harmonic shocks. It is followed by Sanctum by the Canadian composer Sarah Quartel. This is a four-part piece that includes various Requiem texts and is dedicated to the four elements present in the landscape of the Canadian West Coast: water, mountains, wind and sky. The Stabat Mater from the Basque author Eva Ugalde was specifically composed for this project. It is a work for a female choir, piano and accordion, which in addition to the Latin text includes some Basque texts about motherhood written by the composer herself. In Mulieribus ends with Folk Mass by the Latvian, Laura Jekobsone. This is a piece with a Latin mass structure, but that from the start evokes a multitude of colours, melodies, rhythms and atmospheres of international folklore. This is a six-voice piece for an a capella choir, with great vocal demands and extension, but very friendly, close and even fun for the public. Download dossier

The Lumen de Lumen program presents a careful selection of contemporary religious music written for female choir and piano. The title alludes to a verse of the Creed of the ordinary of the Latin Mass that could be translated as light from light and establishes brightness and luminosity as its guiding thread. This is a characteristic very typical of adult female choirs in which, in the absence of low male voices, compositions explore new proposals and timbre qualities, widening the vocal tessitura and the technical possibilities of the choir to its maximum. This program, while drawing from the Latin tradition of the sacred repertoire, aims to open horizons through the contribution of contemporary composers from three continents: Francisco Ibáñez-Iribarria from Alava, György Orbán from Romania, Tokuhide Niimi and Kentaro Sato from Japan and Gwyneth Walker from America. Download dossier

It is a very interesting and original musical proposal, as it includes a varied selection of works written for female choir by women composers from different periods, styles and origins. From the American Amy Beach or Gwyneth Walker, to the Basque Junkal Guerrero or Eva Ugalde, the program is structured around the wonderful Snow Angel suite, by the Canadian composer Sarah Quartel.

There are several combinations that this program can offer, since there are many Masses for female choir that Vocalia Taldea has performed in recent years. From the wonderful Mass No. 6 by the Romanian György Orbán for female choir and piano to the Mass in A by the Hungarian Miklós Kocsár, the Little Jazz Mass for combo and female choir by the British Bob Chilcott or the Mass in Discantu by the Swedish Carl-Bertil Agnestig.

In the XIX century, with the flourishing of the bourgeoisie and choral societies, the great authors also discovered the female choir as a possibility to express yearnings and feelings and to put music to some of the most beautiful texts ever created by contemporary poets. This program includes a selection of some of the masterpieces of the time, including the Tre Rossi by Rossini, the famous Drei Motetten Op 39 by F. Mendelssohn or the incomparable Serenade by Franz Schubert for solo voice, piano and female choir.

This musical proposal arises around one of the most emblematic and international works written for female voices: the Stabat Mater by G. Pergolesi, composed in 1736 during the last weeks of the author's life, retired in a Franciscan monastery in Naples and sick with tuberculosis. Originally written for solo voices and a small instrumental ensemble, this work of great beauty and drama was subsequently adapted to achieve an interesting alternation between the solo and choral parts. In this program, we have taken on the challenge through its eponymous work written in 2009 by the American composer Jacob Cooper. It is a defragmentation of the first composition including, in addition to the instrumental ensemble, an electro-acoustic recording, which, while evoking the textures and harmonic clashes of the Italian language, offers an avant-garde and truly contemporary context.

This program includes a careful selection of motets and psalms dedicated to the figure of the Virgin Mary as inspiration. It may be for a female a capella choir or with piano and/or organ accompaniment. The selection of works may be adapted to the setting or duration established for the concert, including music by authors from the XIX century (J. Brahms, F. Mendelssohn, G. Holst, and others), XX century (P. Kostiainen, G. Orbán, E. Podgaits, M. Kocsár, and others) and XXI century (D. Andreo, X. Sarasola, and others). Vocalia Taldea produced a recording in 2015 under this title and presented the project live on different stages throughout the Basque Country, Segovia and Paris.