Balkan music lured Kitka director to S.F.

Shira Cion’s path to a decades-long involvement with the women’s chorus Kitka began in the 1980s, when she was studying music at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She had a particular interest in the extended vocal techniques favored by the composer and performer Meredith Monk, and one day a fellow student slipped her a cassette tape labeled simply, “Bulgarian.”

“He said, ‘If you’re into Meredith Monk and wild uses of the voice, you should check this out,’ ” Cion recalled. “It was a tape of traditional polyphonic village music from Bulgaria, and it just exploded my mind’s ear.”

Cion made a beeline for San Francisco, where she’d heard there was an active Balkan traditional music scene. There were two leading choruses devoted to women’s a cappella singing, and she got in touch with both. One was getting ready for an upcoming concert and asked her to check back in a couple of months; the other one, Kitka, brought her in for an audition days later.

She’s been there ever since, first as a singing member, and since 1997 as the group’s artistic and executive director.

Kitka’s membership fluctuates between six and 12 singers, according to the performance project, but the group’s stylistic roots remain constant. It’s devoted to the distinctive sounds of traditional choral music from Eastern Europe — not just Bulgaria and Macedonia, but also Ukraine, Russia, the nations that formerly made up Yugoslavia, and even the Baltic states.

“This is music that utilizes a different set of vocal techniques than traditional choral music or Western classical music or even Western pop music,” Cion said. “It’s a very natural sort of speech-based voice production that was originally used for outdoor singing to accompany the rhythms of everyday work in agricultural societies.”

The harmonies are dense and powerful, full of perfectly tuned intervals that create a ringing web of overtones. The rhythms, too, are unusual to Western ears, with meters based on 7, 11 or 15 beats — a function, Cion says, of the region’s traditional dance forms.

Kitka’s repertoire includes a mix of purely traditional music and new works composed expressly for the ensemble. Cion, who is the organization’s only full-time employee, oversees the musical curation process together with Deputy Director Kelly Atkins and longtime member Janet Kutulas, whom Cion describes as her “art wife.” (Cion, 57, lives in Berkeley with her husband, a master drummer and multiinstrumentalist from Bulgaria.)

One of the group’s annual traditions is the seasonal “Wintersongs” program, which draws on holiday music from throughout the Balkan and Slavic world. This year, in light of the geopolitical situation, the program focuses on music of Ukraine.

“We’re doing music based on some traditional Ukrainian seasonal rituals, with symbolism of sun, moon, stars and rain that shows up in holiday carols,” she explained, adding that they aim to raise funds and awareness for humanitarian aid organizations that have been recommended by their Ukrainian collaborators.

“But we’ve also sprinkled in some Georgian and Bulgarian and Serbian music. We always make a sort of patchwork quilt.”

Photos by Vincent Louis Carrella The women’s chorus Kitka is devoted to the distinctive sounds of traditional choral music from Eastern Europe.

Vincent Louis Carrella Shira Cion has been Kitka’s executive director since 1997.