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KITKA Womans Vocal Ensemble
Vincent Louis Carrella
Acclaim
If you didn't know better, you'd think some post-modern composer was behind it. Read More...
Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Kitka's tone is pure, and tuning is impeccable. Its ensemble and phrasing is highly evolved. Read More...
Rick Walters, Shepherd Express
…There is a sense for the mystery and tragedy of life amid the lulling harmonies. Read More...
David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express
Kitka has found compelling and creative ways to present…traditional tunes. Read More...
Kimberly Chun, 7x7
[Kitka's] blending of...songs and text [creates] a "sonic collage"—an interweaving of vocal textures and techniques. Read More...
Jaime Robles, Repeat Performances
Kitka's music accompanies my life.
Meredith Monk, award-winning composer and performer
A stunning group unlike any other…absolutely electrifying!
Garrison Keillor, A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION
Simply amazing harmonies…truly this is the most wonderful singing I have ever heard.
David Crosby, CROSBY, STILLS, AND NASH
Gusty Kitka sings to the heart.
Wayne Bledsoe, The Knoxville Sentinel
When Kitka starts to sing, they transport you far away, to a place where wind sweeps through deep evergreen forests and stars spill out of the sky… They ran through 22 folk tunes with rapt, almost introspective attention to the demands of fast trills, fluid glissandos, perfect unisons and soft subtle shadings mesmerizing in their loveliness.
Rocky Leplin, Hills Publications
The printed word cannot describe the shouts, the cries, the mouth music, the sliding of the voice to reach an opening note, the complex rhythms, and harmonies that Kitka achieved. A writer can describe what the music, brought to a spellbound audience at the Varsity Theater evoked: women working together, celebrating together, supporting each other in song.
Marilyn Mantay, The Davis Enterprise
Kitka's songs are hauntingly beautiful, simple, yet otherworldly. The rich sound these women produce resonates as if energized by the universe itself, as if it were calling all live beings and still matter into togetherness and unity.
Ching Chang, San Fransisco Chronicle
The shimmering and pungent sounds of Kitka are cloth-of-gold thread in the sumptuous musical tapestry.
Timothy Pfaff, San Fransisco Examiner
The sound is haunting and immensely powerful—deep penetrating female voices centered on a single melody line or a wordless drone. The Eastern European choral music [sung by Kitka] has a power to move listeners like few other styles.
Dave Becker, Cue
A surprisingly varied concert celebrating women's lives and women's voices. A veritable feast for the ears, the eyes, and the mind.
John Lambert, North Carolina Spectator
Quick screams alternating with bang-on harmony, pure bell tones and powerful perfect, perfect fifths… singing like the very fertility of the earth—the singing went on in quartertone shaking and deep, dark passion… a radiant ensemble… the evening was transcendent.
Mark Alburger, 20th Century Music
An earbending experience… Kitka's sonority evokes a world of rugged beauty.
Allan Ulrich, San Fransisco Examiner
Exquisite voices singing in harmony with vivid emotion in an exotic, but strangely familiar, language… [Kitka] reaches a sublimity that is hard to match.
Mac McDonald, The Monterey Herald
Kitka trafficked in ghostly harmonies and delicious discord. The eight vocalists sang dissonant and diaphanous love songs, laments, and lullabies. The voices soared.
Sam Hurwitt, The Pacific Sun
One of the most unusual, delightful and technically proficient vocal ensembles…a Kitka concert serves as a wonderful mixed bouquet… There's variety in rhythm and intonation, from the nasality and glottal stops of the mountainous Rhodope region…to the plaintive, heavenly harmonies of Macedonia.
Jeff Kaliss, Oakland Tribute
Despite being unable to understand a word the women sang, I was stirred to the depths of my soul and more than once moved to tears.
Bruce Amsbary, Seattle Gay News
For several magical moments, their rich, resonant harmonies seemed to linger in the darkness, throbbing like long-lined notes of a violin…the kind of production that audience members hold tight as if it were cut from the cloth of time.
George Rawlinson, Elgin Courier News
Exquisitely harmonized and rhythmically charged songs that translated into laments about the ravages of war as well as celebrations of community. Kitka executed the Balkan microtonal harmonies and dissonance and the diaphonic drone melody juxtapositions with breathtaking precision…An inspirational concert that served as a reminder that it is never too late to connect with tradition.
Derk Richardson, Billboard
A brilliant musical program…all of it performed with accuracy and flair.
Don Heckman, Los Angeles Times
The haunting harmonies are both evocative and unforgettable.
Steve Hochman & Andrew Gilbert, The California Report (NPR)
Their hard-tinted voices, the crystal glints and strange piercing edges, this was female singing that was beautiful without being smooth, all of this sounded new and surprising…
Deanne Sole, PopMatters.com
…An overwhelming performance full of mystery, magic, and an undeniable spiritual force. The women of Kitka sing, scream, whoop, wail, howl, and harmonize, imbuing the music with an almost primal power…The harmonies intertwine, shattering the divisions of space, time, and spirit, spinning a emotional spell that will haunt you long after the last note fades into the breath of the infinite.
J. Poet, East Bay Express
Kitka shares the same haunting repertoire as Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares—plus Bosnian, Croatian, Macedonian, Russian, and Ukrainian folk material—but Kitka's sonority is much more supple and lyrical than its Bulgarian counterpart.
Paul Hertelendy, The Chicago Tribune
The traditional and arranged songs became intoxicating through the vocal mastery and uncanny interpretive ability of Kitka.
Rajna Klaser, S.F. Classical Voice
…Haunting and evocative vocal work
John Schaeffer, WNYC New Sounds
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