Volti’s professional singers, under the direction of founder and Artistic Director Robert Geary, are national leaders in the discovery, creation, and performance of new vocal music. They are the first ensemble to have won the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music six times. In this recording they introduce 21st-century works they commissioned from American composers of dazzling range and diversity. Volti’s resident composer Mark Winges contributes “Canticles of Rumi,” settings of five poems by the 13th-century poet and founder of Sufism. Seattle-based composer John Muehleisen contributes “…is knowing…”- a musical analogy to Gertrude Stein’s linguistic Cubism. Album closer “Paradise” by Shawn Crouch was originally commissioned by Chanticleer in 2009 and then substantially revised for Volti in 2013. The work is based on the poems of American poet Brian Turner, an Iraq War veteran, whose moving accounts of war are set alongside the poetry of the 12th century Persian poet Hafez. “…undoubtedly the finest collection of new music singers we have.” – San Francisco Classical Voice.