Founded by music director Daniel Paulson in 2006, the 12-person ensemble Vox Musica has produced 40 concert projects and given more than 100 performances.
Paulson is an alumnus of the School of Music at Sacramento State and is currently Professor of Voice and Choral Music at Sacramento City College.
The all-treble vocal group has collaborated with composers, conductors and choirs from all over the world, including ones in India and Japan. Their repertoire features hundreds of works by living composers, many in the Sacramento area, and recently the ensemble was selected as the recipient of the 2015-16 American Society of Composers and Publishers National Award for Adventurous Programming.
CapRadio’s Jennifer Reason recently sat down with soprano Allison Proffitt to discuss their place as a niche in the local music scene as well as their upcoming holiday concert, “Darkness to Light”.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Interview Highlights
On what Vox Musica brings to Sacramento
I would say freshness because we constantly have world premieres and national premieres of new works from diverse composers. We give Sacramento an opportunity to hear something that they’ve never heard before. In the context of a creative concert project, the way that we stage things is really unique. We try to maximize people’s experience so that it’s just completely immersive. We’ve had a lot of visual artists collaborate with us as well so you really never know what you’re going to see.
On why it’s important to add brand new works to the canon
The human experience is limitless and people have all kinds of interesting ideas. If you always stick to the same choral music, you’re always going to get something beautiful but you’re not necessarily going to be introduced to those new ideas and be able to connect to people in new ways. Discovering underrepresented composers is something we’ve focused on more in recent seasons, bringing those stories to light so that people have a chance to appreciate the richness of artistry that exists for living composers
On their upcoming concerts
The theme this year is darkness to light, and we’ve really flipped our concert format on its head. Typically our Christmas shows start with something really beautiful, move into these big bright works and then close with an arrangement of “Silent Night.” This year we’ve decided to flip that and start in darkness both musically and literally with the arrangement of “Silent Night.”
We have done a lot of work with intentions this year and it’s a really democratic process, talking about what we want the audience to feel and what we want to put forward in our music. Just like the feeling of gathering on a cold night around a candle, we want people to feel this communal experience that there is always hope. We’ve all gone through a lot in the last few years as a world and as a society and now that music is coming back we want people to feel that there is hope and we are still connected.
Vox Musica will perform three concerts in the Sacramento region in December:
- Saturday, Dec. 16, 7 p.m.
Sierra Vista Community Church
890 Morse Ave, Sacramento
- Sunday, Dec. 17, 5 p.m.
Davis United Methodist Church
1620 Anderson Road, Davis
- Monday, Dec. 18, 7 p.m.
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
2620 Capitol Ave, Sacramento
Tickets are available on Vox Musica’s website.
