Volti, San Francisco's 20-voice professional chamber choir, has achieved national recognition as pioneers in new vocal music: they are the first and only chorus to have won ASCAP/Chorus America's Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music Award six times. This disc shows what the buzz is all about, with works by eight contemporary American composers, five of them commissioned and premiered by Volti, under its founder and artistic director Robert Geary. Opening the disc is the first recording of all four movements of Aaron Jay Kernis' stunning and hypnotic Ecstatic Meditations, named by the National Endowment for the Arts as an American Masterpiece of Choral Music. Also featured is the first recording of a major new work by Volti's resident composer Mark Winges, Open the Book of What Happened (2005). Other never-before-recorded Volti commissions include Kurt Rohde's Endless, a six-part setting of luminous, elliptical poetry by Jakob Stein (2007); Gabriela Lena Frank's startling, rhythmic Ccollanan Maria!, a multicultural mix of traditional Catholic imagery with ancient Incan ritual (2004); two of Stacy Garrop's Sonnets of Beauty and Music, part of her project to set 23 sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay (2006); and Eric Moe's O the Flesh is Hot but the Heart is Cold (2005) - about which all we can say is that any piece of music based on a poem titled 'Baked Alaska: a Theory of' just begs to be tasted

This set of world premiere recordings showcases the stunning talent of Chinese-American composer Kui Dong. The grandeur of 'Shui Diao Ge Tou and Song' is performed brilliantly by San Francisco's adventurous choir Volti, led fearlessly by conductor Robert Geary, who also presents the heartfelt 'Let Frogs and Crickets Carry It On' with the Piedmont Children's Choir. The recording is rounded off by a stark set of piano works and the unlikely pairing of the Melody of China ensemble with the Del Sol String Quartet.