Voce Velata returns to Manchester for performance highlighting BIPOC and women composers
Voce Velata. Photo courtesy of Merrill Guerra.
by Sara Swanson
On Thursday, June, 11 at 7pm, the youth-led chamber ensemble, Voce Velata out of Ann Arbor will be putting on a special performance of In Retrospect in Manchester. Joined by professionals, they will collaborate in a multi-media performance including live music, spoken commentary, and video performance and documentation.
Voce Velata, based in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area, performs with the mission of unveiling the voices of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and Women composers through deep study and authentic performance. This performance will feature the music of Jessie Montgomery, Fawn Wood, Florence Price, and more.
The Manchester performance will be at Dragonfly and Birch, 115 E Main St. starting at 7pm and will last approximately an hour. Tickets are $10 and are available in person at Dragonfly & Birch or online on Eventbrite. The money raised from ticket sales will go to Voce Velata, a non-profit that exists on grants and donations.
Voce Velata last performed in Manchester in June of 2021 as part of the Passport to Manchester event series co-sponsored by the Manchester Area Historical Society and Riverfolk Music & Arts Organization.
Kasia Bielak-Hoops, Education Director, Voce Velata offered a glimpse into their process. She wrote:
Our upcoming program, “In Retrospect”, unfolded like a series of questions our ensemble is learning to hold. What does it mean to interpret music shaped by histories we are still trying to understand? How do we unveil truth with care and respect? On which untold story do we shine the light?
Working with the music of Grammy award winning composer Jessie Montgomery has been central to this process. Each season, her “Strum” returns as a kind of anchor, but it never feels the same. This year, I’ve watched the young musicians of the group move deeper into its rhythmic structure and take ownership over the interpretation. Montgomery writes that music is a “meeting place” where people can encounter both difference and shared stories. In rehearsal, I see that idea taking root—not as abstraction, but as something they are actively trying to embody.
As a pairing to Strum, we have chosen to bring Montgomery’s “Banner” back to the stage as a multi-media experience. Written as a tribute to the 200th anniversary of the “Star-Spangled Banner”, Montogomery reflects: “For most Americans, the [Star-Spangled Banner] represents a paradigm of liberty and solidarity against fierce odds, and for others implies a contradiction between the ideals of freedom and the realities of injustice and oppression.” How, then, do we engage with the tension of this complexity? This is the question that Voce members were tasked to sit with, and while not finding any one answer, came to recognize that difference itself can be a generative force.
Some of the most profound moments have come from watching them trace the journey of a song.
When we began the preparation for recording our string arrangement of “Remember Me” by Cree artist Fawn Wood, the initial focus was on musical translation—on phrasing, enunciation, color. But as they learned more about the song’s origins, written in memory of Wood’s uncle, and its resonance within the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit movement, something shifted. As students grappled with what it means to carry a song that already holds so much meaning for others, they began to understand that performing is not simply an act of expression—it is also an act of responsibility.
A similar reckoning has emerged in our study of the work of Florence Price. For many of us, her music is both inspiring and unsettling—both in the soundscapes she creates and in what her story reveals. When we encounter her 1943 letter advocating for her work to be judged on its merit, we begin to see more clearly the structures that shaped her career. Guided in part by the scholarship of Samantha Ege, we begin to fully understand how histories are constructed and whose voices are allowed to endure.
What has been truly rewarding, though, is watching how these emerging musicians begin to think about their role in relation to an audience.
Throughout this process, they are not only preparing the music—they are preparing how to invite others into it. They have been shaping the ways they will speak about these works, deciding what questions to offer, what context might open a door, and where to leave space for listeners to form their own interpretations. When you attend “In Retrospect”, you will not simply witness a performance. You will be welcomed into an ongoing conversation, to listen closely and to become part of what is unfolding.
This event came to be because of a long friendship between Bielak-Hoops and Merrill Guerra, owner of Dragonfly and Birch. Guerra explained that they met in 2012 when they started their positions as co-directors of the Ann Arbor Community School of Music (now Community Music School). Guerra’s real estate brokerage, Red Barn Realty, has been a supporter of Voce Velata from their start, providing them rehearsal space. She added, “I have attended many of their performances and it is always a fun and educational evening of great music.”
Learn more about Voce Velata at www.vocevelatamusic.org.
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