May 30: San Francisco Girls Chorus Presents Chorus School Spring Concert featuring World Premiere by Composer-in-Residence Sabha Aminikia
Photos available in high resolution at www.sfgirlschorus.org/press-room.
The San Francisco Girls Chorus Presents its Chorus School Spring Concert
Featuring World Premiere by SFGC Composer-in-Residence Sabha Aminikia
Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 7pm
Oakland Scottish Rite Center | 1547 Lakeside Drive | Oakland, CA
Tickets & Information: www.sfgirlschorus.org/performances
San Francisco, CA –The San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) concludes its 2023-2024 season, celebrating 45 years of empowering young women, when the Chorus School will showcase singers from Levels I through IV at its annual Chorus School Spring Concert at the Oakland Scottish Rite Center (1547 Lakeside Drive, Oakland) on Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 7pm, coming together to celebrate their accomplishments this year individually and as a school.
A culmination of their studies, students will perform the repertoire they have worked on this season. On the program are works by Gabriel Fauré, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Earlene Rentz, Alberto Favero, Felix Mendelssohn, and more. The chorus school led by Level III Director Terry Alvord closes the concert with the world premiere of SFGC Composer-in-Residence Sahba Aminikia’s newest work, Woman, Life, Freedom, written for SFGC.
Aminikia describes Woman, Life, Freedom as a protest song and an homage to Iranian women, which sets text by 14th century Persian poet Hafez›. Aminikia explains, “‘Woman, Life, Freedom’” is a slogan that originated within the women-led Kurdish movements. However, after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who died in a hospital in Tehran, Iran under suspicious circumstances, this slogan became the name of the Iranian women's movement after September 2022. Prior to her death, Mahsa was detained by Tehran’s morality police for failing to properly cover her hair. Through the protests since then, 551 protestors were killed by security forces, including 502 men, 49 women, and 68 children in 26 provinces out of 31 provinces in Iran. The women’s rights movement in Iran originally initiated in the mid-19th century. However, the first official social movement emerged in 1910 after the Iranian constitutional revolution, leading to the establishment of societies and magazines shortly after, which continues until today.”
The San Francisco Girls Chorus School Composer-in-Residence program gives singers a chance to learn more about the process of creating new music, and to interact with a living composer over an extended period of time. During the year-long residency, the composer visits rehearsals, meets with Level Directors, and creates a new work expressly for the Chorus School, engaging each group at their own musical level, reaching out to musical minds spanning a broad age range. This program also encourages composers to consider the vast artistic potential of young girls' voices, finding new and colorful ways to bring this unique instrument into the broader musical life of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Since 1978, SFGC has provided girls and young women the unique opportunity not only to perform at the highest artistic caliber, but also to develop self-confidence, leadership skills, and an awareness of the role of the arts in civic engagement. A leader in the Bay Area and national music scenes, SFGC produces award-winning concerts, recordings and tours; empowers young women in music and other fields; and sets the international standard for the highest level of performance and education. SFGC has been recognized through numerous honors including five GRAMMY Awards, four ASCAP/Chorus America Awards for Adventurous Programming, and in 2002, becoming the first youth chorus to receive Chorus America's prestigious Margaret Hillis Achievement Award for Choral Excellence. Each year, hundreds of singers of diverse backgrounds from 45 Bay Area cities ranging in age from age four to eighteen participate in SFGC’s programs. The organization consists of a six-level Chorus School training program and the Premier Ensemble, a professional-level chorus of treble voices.
Under the direction of Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe, SFGC has achieved an incomparable sound that underscores the unique clarity and force of impeccably trained treble voices fused with expressiveness and drama. As a result, the SFGC vibrantly performs 1,000 years of choral masterworks from plainchant to the most challenging and nuanced contemporary works, many created expressly for them, in programs that are as intelligently designed as they are enjoyable and revelatory to experience.
Up next, on June 22 SFGC will perform at the Kronos Quartet’s 2024 Kronos Festival at SF Jazz. From June 8-22, Level IV Choristers will travel to Caen, France for a two-week intensive rehearsal and performance process culminating in the world premiere multi-disciplinary opera O Future by composer Thierry Pécou. Later this summer, the SFGC Premier Ensemble embarks on a tour of South Africa from July 10-21, 2024.
More about the San Francisco Girls Chorus: www.sfgirlschorus.org/about
More about Valérie Sainte-Agathe: www.sfgirlschorus.org/valerie-sainte-agathe
The San Francisco Girls Chorus receives support from Grants for the Arts, The Kimball Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Sequoia Trust, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., The Sam Mazza Foundation, The Bernard Osher Foundation, and the Joseph and Vera Long Foundation.