Volti -- San Francisco's award-winning contemporary-music vocal ensemble -- opens the holiday concert season with a non-traditional program rich in poetry. No saccharine sleighbells here, as Robert Geary leads his 20 professional singers in an exploration of aspects of the divine in the most mundane moments.

Three world premieres anchor the program:

-- Mark Winges's "Canticles of Rumi" tells us "We have fallen into the place where everything is music" -- and what better way to start a concert?

-- Stacy Garrop's "Songs of Lowly Life" uses poetry of the seminal African-American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar to examine the trajectory of the life of an Everyman.

-- Ian Freebairn-Smith sets "Season," a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin, evoking the nostalgic power of revisiting a house once lived in, a familiar feeling at this time of year.

Volti rounds off the program with a performance of "The Garden of Paradise," which Shawn Crouch wrote for Chanticleer in 2009. Crouch, like Winges, turns to the poems of 13th Century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi, but here he contrasts them with a viewpoint of the "cradle of civilization" as seen by Iraq War veteran and poet Brian Turner.

Friday, December 2, 8pm
Mount Tamalpais United Methodist Church
410 Sycamore Avenue, Mill Valley

Saturday, December 3, 8pm
St. Mark's Lutheran Church
1111 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco

Sunday, December 4, 4 pm
The David Brower Center
2150 Allston Way, Berkeley

www.voltisf.org

Tickets: (save $5 off door prices by buying in advance)
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/201743

Volunteer? See our concerts for free by ushering or helping with post-concert receptions. Contact Barbara@VoltiSF.org