Ken Abrams has been the choir director at San Ramon Valley High School (SRVHS) in Danville, California since the 1980s. Under his direction are several choirs, including the SRVHS Concert Choir and the Treble Clef Choir, which were both first place winners at the 2009 Golden State Choral Competition. Many of the SRVHS choirs tour the country in the summer as well as record an annual CD. Spark visits with the 82-member SRVHS Concert Choir as they prepare for their 2010 spring concert, which features selections from Antonio Carlos Jobim, George Gershwin, and Freddie Mercury.

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Bay Area vocal group Kitka began their journey in 1979 as a gathering of amateur singers fascinated with the exploration of traditional Eastern European women’s vocal music. Under the direction of Bon Singer from 1981 to 1996 and now led by executive director Shira Cion and music director Janet Kutulas, Kitka has developed into a professional touring company dedicated to performing, recording and presenting collaborative and educational opportunities related to Balkan, Slavic and Caucasian music for audiences across the globe. Celebrating their 30th year in 2009, Kitka continues to grow artistically with challenging new projects, tours and collaborations.

The process by which the company acquires new repertoire is rooted in careful study. The eight-member group works with renowned masters from all over Eastern Europe and travels to various countries to conduct fieldwork and make critical personal connections with women in small villages, many of whom are the last to sing the songs of their ancestors. Over the years, members of Kitka were inspired by the legends of the Rusalki, siren-like mythical creatures thought to be the spirits of women who suffered tragic or untimely deaths. Working with Ukrainian singer and composer Mariana Sadovska, they returned to Ukraine to learn songs and rituals surrounding the Rusalki directly from the women in rural communities, and they created a vocal-theater piece based on their research. The Rusalka Cycle opened to resounding success in 2005 and again in 2008, and it is being remounted to tour Eastern Europe in 2009.

Each year brings new projects and a new concert season, and to celebrate their 30th anniversary, Kitka released their recording Lullabies and Songs of Childhood. This collection of reinterpreted traditional lullabies has been passed on in the oral tradition by generations of Balkan, Slavic, Georgian and Armenian women. For their project Singing Through the Darkness: A Dramatic Song-Cycle Performance, they gathered songs and stories that express the multifaceted experience of wartime, with a special effort to invite contributions from the survivors of the Balkan conflict living in the Bay Area.

As part of their ongoing commitment to preserving endangered vocal traditions and collaborations with traditional artists, Kitka developed a program called Song Routes in a New Land: Folk Song Master Residencies, in which they work with several master folk singers and teachers dedicated to transmitting their vocal heritage both at home and within immigrant communities in the United States. Artists for 2009 include Birol Topaloglu (Laz vocalist from Turkey), Tzvetanka Varimezova (Bulgaria), Ensemble Kedry (Siberia) and Hasmik Harutyunyan (Armenia).

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For hundreds of the South Bay’s young Chinese Americans, reconnecting to their cultural heritage happens through the Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra (FYCO). Founded in 2000 by Gordon Lee, the FYCO originally attracted only 13 young musicians. Today it boasts more than 100 youngsters, ranging in age from 9 to 17 years old, who come together once a week to practice on instruments whose origins date back thousands of years.

Lee and his core of musicians formed the orchestra after the successful premiere performance in Cupertino of one of Lee’s compositions, a work based on the Disney movie Mulan. Spark takes viewers behind the scenes with the Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra as they prepare the classic folk piece “The General’s Command” for a concert at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts in 2009.

Although the instruments they play — the lute-like pipa, the ancient moon-shaped ruan, the two-stringed fiddle called an erhu, the seven-string zither called a guqin and the hammered yanqin, among many others — date as far back as 200 B.C., the concept of a large orchestra of Chinese instruments is relatively modern. China’s first modern orchestra was founded in 1935 in Nanjing by Jilue Chen, one of Lee’s own teachers. In 2004, by invitation of the People’s Republic of China, the FYCO traveled to Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai to perform at three of the country’s most prestigious music conservatories, becoming the first Chinese orchestra from the West to perform in China.

The Beijing-born Lee, whose love for traditional Chinese music was not dimmed by “reeducation” during the Cultural Revolution, began learning to play the pipa at age 13 and studied under Chen at the Sichuan National Conservatory. After emigrating to the United States in 1989, Lee earned an M.A. from San Jose State University in 1995, and since 2002, he has been on the faculty of San Jose City College, where the FYCO also offers music lessons for Chinese instruments. The composer and conductor, who creates his own arrangements of traditional Chinese works for the FYCO, has also fostered collaborations for the orchestra with other performing groups, including the Shaolin monks, who appeared with the orchestra in March 2009.

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Wil Blades is at the top of the local music scene as a Hammond B3 organ player. The B3 is that big warm sultry, funky tone that provided the groove to many of the 1960s and 1970s R&B recordings. The B3 is experiencing a revival today, particularly among jazz saxophonists who find it a nice complement to a trio.

Blades is only in his 20s but plays like a veteran, and his knowledge of the instrument is encyclopedic. He has accompanied the greats, including good friend and B3 legend Dr. Lonnie Smith. Their relationship is based in part on their love of music, but also Smith has been a mentor to Blades.

There aren’t a lot of places besides the Boom Boom Room that have a B3, so Blades owns three of his own organs. For many of his performances, Blades lugs his organ around the Bay Area in his van — as Spark witnesses. As he says, “It’s like a piece of furniture.” Imagine taking a 400-pound desk around with you, and you begin to get the idea.

Originally from Chicago, Blades began playing and studying drums at the age of 8, guitar at 13 and organ at 18. He studied at New College of California. He teaches at Berkeley Jazz School and plays in a number of different groups, including the Wil Blades Trio, O.G.D., Steppin’ and BluesBeat. Blades can be seen performing regularly as the house organist at John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom Room.

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In Silicon Valley, software engineers often exit lucrative careers and strike out on their own. What’s less common is leaving the fast-paced epicenter of technological innovation to bet on success as an independent singer-songwriter. But that’s exactly what Bay Area-raised performer Vienna Teng did in 2002. And before she knew what was happening, Teng was landing gigs on NPR and David Letterman, and she was on her way to performing hundreds of concerts around the globe.

“Like so many other aspiring pre-meds, I was undone by organic chemistry. And that was around the time I started to think, ‘Well, maybe this is not really what I’m supposed to do,'” Teng tells Spark during a visit to perform at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

After falling out of love with the idea of a future in medicine, Teng put her computer science degree from Stanford University to work at Cisco Systems. In her off-hours, she channeled the music skills she’d been honing since she was a little girl into original songs that drew upon the classical training of her youth and her parents’ music collection, one steeped in folk rock, Mozart and Mandarin pop tunes. Promoting her music through open mic nights and online under the stage name she created as a pre-teen, Teng — whose birth name is Cynthia Shih — soon secured a record deal with a small startup label.

“When I was 12, that’s when I came up with the name, and I thought, ‘Oh, if I’m a rock star, I’m going to have this stage name, and, like, no one will know my real identity,'” Teng recalls.

Along with a new identity, Teng brought forth an eclectic, hybrid sound she dubs “chamber folk.” Narrative-driven songs featuring Teng’s high, agile vocals unfold against a genre-defying backdrop of violin, cello, piano and percussion into a sonic landscape that’s strikingly unconventional despite its classical underpinnings.

Teng has released three albums. Her fourth, titled Inland Territories, is due out in April 2009. According to the singer-songwriter, Inland Territories is her most personal album yet. Says Teng, “I think ultimately I was more interested in being a storytelling kind of songwriter.”

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San Jose Taiko (SJT) is a drumming ensemble based in San Jose’s Japantown. They are renowned for their unique blend of traditional Japanese music with world-music influences. Spark joins SJT as they prepare for their 35th anniversary celebration.

SJT was started in 1973 by Reverend Hiroshi Abiko, Roy Hirabayashi, and Dean Miyakusu. They were looking to promote Japanese cultural awareness in San Jose, a city with one of the longest established Japanese communities in the United States. They chose taiko for its excitement and athleticism, and because it offered them a chance to engage with third generation Asian Americans who had not been raised with the traditional music of their ancestors.

Early on, SJT developed its unique take on taiko by fusing it with a variety a beats from the R&B music the members grew up on, and the percussion sounds of Bali, Africa, and Brazil. While some early critics were skeptical of the SJT’s departure from the traditional, they’ve started a trend of innovation in the art form that has spread across the country. The ethnically diverse performing company tours extensively both nationally and internationally, reaching over 100,000 people each year.

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Bay Area musician Paul Mehling is helping to introduce a new generation of music lovers to the work of legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt. Known as one of the godfathers of the Gypsy jazz revival, Mehling, along with his band, Hot Club of San Francisco, attempts to recreate the sounds, tales, and atmosphere of Reinhardt’s band, Quintette du Hot Club de France, active mostly in and around Paris in the 1930s and 40s.

Reinhardt was one of the first European-born jazz musicians to gain international acclaim, and was commonly considered to be the most virtuosic guitar player alive. Reinhardt was single-handedly responsible for the invention and popularization of Gypsy jazz — or “jazz manouche,” a style of music that fused Gypsy guitar technique with swing jazz. Reinhardt’s influence was felt far beyond the arena of Gypsy jazz, his music continuing to inform guitarists working in a wide spectrum of idioms.

Mehling first discovered Reinhardt’s music as a teenager while listening to his father’s record collection. Inspired by the rhythms and inflections of Gypsy jazz, these recordings fueled Mehling’s desire to learn the guitar. In search of Gypsy jazz players, Mehling moved to Paris at the age of 23. He spent six months honing his skills and retracing the footsteps of his hero. He has since become a teacher, instructing Reinhardt enthusiasts in Gypsy guitar technique.

For about two decades, Mehling has led the Hot Club of San Francisco, which copies the exact, unusual instrumentation of the Quintette du Hot Club de France, combining three guitarists with violinist and string bassist. Though jazz manouche is usually associated with fast, hot guitar licks, Mehling is particularly attached to the more mysterious, melancholy aspects of the genre, incorporating many haunting, wistful tunes into the band’s repertoire.

Spark follows Mehling’s band to the 2008 San Francisco/Mill Valley Djangofest, one of several festivals around the world that bring together musicians from diverse backgrounds to celebrate Reinhardt’s legacy. Playing at Mill Valley’s historic 142 Throckmorton Theatre, the Hot Club of San Francisco, along with many other bands working in the jazz manouche style, are helping bring Reinhardt’s sounds to a new generation of music lovers.

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Pianist Rebeca Mauleón grew up in San Francisco listening to Carlos Santana. When she started playing professionally in her early twenties, Mauleón performed and recorded with some of the luminaries of Latin and jazz including Tito Puente, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, even Santana himself.

Today, she’s a prolific player, composer, and arranger, but she does more than create music. Mauleón is a musicologist and author, having written several texts on Latin music technique, including the Salsa Guidebook. Spark catches up with Mauleón as she switches hats, more than once — composing Latin music for software companies, teaching Caribbean music traditions at City College of San Francisco, and leading her own ensemble on stage and off.

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For more than 20 years, the Jewish Music Festival has brought eclectic music from every corner of the Jewish diaspora to Bay Area audiences. For their 23rd annual event, festival director Ellie Shapiro has commissioned nine artists from Israel, Ukraine, New York, New Orleans and the Bay Area to create groundbreaking new Jewish music — and they only have six days to do it.

While the festival is underway, the musicians hole up in the basement of a divinity school in the Berkeley hills. On the seventh day, The Ark artists premiere the work at the closing night on the 2008 Jewish Music Festival. Spark gets an insider’s look at the process.

The Ark musicians all share a deep commitment to traditional music (from Mississippi Delta blues, to Ukrainian village ballads and Old World klezmer) and have used their talent to take these forms in creative new directions. Almost all of them have worked together before in different configurations. The Ark artists include: Frank London (trumpet), Aaron Alexander (percussion), Avi Avital (mandolin), Stuart Brotman (bass), Jewlia Eisenberg (vocals), Glenn Hartman (accordion and piano), Mariana Sadovska (vocals and harmonium player), John Schott (guitar), and Jessica Ivry (cello).

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After more than 35 years, Yoshi’s, an internationally known East Bay jazz nightclub and restaurant, has recently opened a second outpost in San Francisco’s historic Fillmore District. Incredibly, the same three friends who started Yoshi’s in 1973, Kaz Kajimura, Yoshie Akiba, and Hiroyuki Hori, have owned and ran both clubs until when Hori announced his retirement in 2008.

The new club in San Francisco is Yoshi’s biggest gamble yet. The Fillmore, nicknamed the Harlem of the West, was a jazz and blues hot spot in the 1940s and ’50s. But the neighborhood was obliterated by a redevelopment project begun by the city of San Francisco in 1958.

Many hope that Yoshi’s, and some of the other smaller music venues, will spark a revitalization of the old jazz district. But some critics feel that the upscale club is out of place with the rest of the neighborhood. In an effort to keep the music accessible to the community, Yoshi’s puts on a series of concerts dubbed “Local Legends,” featuring homegrown musicians and lower ticket prices.

Spark captures a fiery performance by blues singer Sugar Pie de Santo, who returns to the Yoshi’s Fillmore stage — just around the corner from where she grew up and was discovered by Johnny Otis in 1955 at the Eddy Street theater talent show. Kajimura and Akiba also discuss the club’s history, from its start as a tiny Japanese restaurant in Berkeley, to their move to Oakland’s Jack London Square, and now its current incarnation.

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For the past 30 years, Martin Schwartz has gathered an impressive collection of rare 78 rpm records, many of them klezmer, a type of instrumental music originating from Eastern European Jews. In the 1970s, Schwartz met some Berkeley musicians who shared his passion for klezmer. They began learning from the old recordings and started a band called Klezmorim, fostering a burgeoning nationwide revival of the genre.

Meaning literally “vessel of song,” klezmer can be played on a variety of instruments – including trombone, clarinet, violin, accordion, tsimbl (a kind of hammered dulcimer), drums, bass viol – but is most commonly associated with the violin and the clarinet. These lead instruments are played in a style that mimics the human voice, common to liturgical singing styles.

Klezmer harkens back to a time when music was an integral part of daily life, supporting weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other sacred and secular celebrations. Today, Schwartz is on the Advisory Council of KlezCalifornia, which was founded in 2003 to celebrate klezmer music and Yiddish culture in the San Francisco Bay Area.

KlezCalifornia offers workshops on music, dance and singing. Participants learn the music by listening and playing back what they hear — no written music is handed out, which is true to the way klezmer has been passed down for hundreds of years. Spark explores this revival at KlezCalifornia shedding light on a tradition that has endured through time and hardships to prove its vitality and relevance to new generations.

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