Musae

Musae We are a treble vocal ensemble based in San Francisco, creating connection and enriching our communities through song

Treble vocal ensemble based in San Francisco, California.

08/21/2026

New concert video 🎧 for a daily dose of defiance!

“Las Amarillas”
Traditional Mexican folk song, arranged by Stephen Hatfield
Artistic Director Elizabeth Kimble
Video by Zach Miley Productions
April 2026
San Francisco

Las Amarillas, meaning “the yellow ones,” takes its name from the calandria, a bright yellow songbird native to Mexico. The text describes the calandrias flying away from their home, unhappy with what they find there, leaving the world quieter without their song. It is a moment of loss and defiance wrapped inside a song that is anything but mournful. The piece is a huapango, a lively southern Mexican dance form with roots in the Spanish fandango, characterized by a “floating downbeat” whose rhythmic emphasis keeps slipping away just as the ear expects to find it. The result is music that is, in the arranger’s own words, “hot-blooded and haughty, a mixture of delight and disdain.” Like the birds in the text, the music itself will not be contained.

08/16/2026

New concert video 🎧 may we always pass our songs from one singer to the next

“Lauliku LapsepĂ”li”
Traditional Estonian folk song, arranged by Veljo Tormis
Artistic Director Elizabeth Kimble
Video by Zach Miley Productions
April 2026
San Francisco

Lauliku LapsepĂ”li, meaning “The Songster’s Childhood,” is a traditional Estonian folk song belonging to the ancient regilaul tradition, one of the oldest surviving folk song forms in the world. Its text tells of a child rocked in a cradle in a meadow, listening to birds sing and learning their songs like a language. Veljo Tormis, one of Estonia’s most beloved composers, spent his life setting folk songs for choir, working under Soviet occupation at a time when Estonian cultural identity was actively suppressed. He famously said of his relationship to this music: “It is not I who makes use of folk music. It is folk music that makes use of me.” In his arrangement, a simple melody passes between voices in an overlapping loop, as if the song itself is being handed from one singer to the next, the way folk music has always traveled.

08/07/2026

New concert video 🎧 for a daily dose of creative energy!

“I Tell the Truth”
Composed by Joan Szymko, text by Susan Conolly
Artistic Director Elizabeth Kimble
Cellist Nancy Bien
Video by Zach Miley Productions
April 2026
San Francisco

I Tell the Truth sets a poem inspired by the Sheela-na-gig, carved stone figures found in medieval churches and castles throughout Ireland, though similar figures appear across European prehistory, millennia before Christianity came to the island. Sheela-na-gigs are female figures, often depicted with exaggerated sexual features, whose meaning has long been contested. For centuries they were dismissed by the Church as expressions of sin and lust, yet many scholars now understand them as far older symbols rooted in pagan goddess traditions and the creative energy of the universe. Susan Connolly’s poem Female Figure. Sheela-na-gig, White Island, Lough Erne, gives the Sheela a voice: after centuries of being hidden, misread, and silenced, she speaks. She grins, she laughs, she tells the truth. The composer was drawn to this poem in the wake of Ireland’s growing reckoning with the Magdalene Laundries, institutions where women were confined, exploited, and silenced under the cover of religious authority. The Sheela becomes a symbol of everything that was suppressed and is now insisting on being seen. The piece moves through three sections: from hiddenness, to a fertility chant and dance, to laughter as an act of survival and witness. Having previously only been performed in Ireland, Musae is proud to offer the North American premiere of this piece, and the world premiere of the treble arrangement, made specially for Musae.

07/23/2026

New concert video 🎧 for a daily dose of exuberance!

“Mata del Ánima Sola”
Composed by Antonio Estévez, arranged by Alberto Grau
Artistic Director Elizabeth Kimble
Soloist Sydney Weaver Sydney
Video by Zach Miley Productions
April 2026
San Francisco

Mata del Ánima Sola, meaning “Tree of the Lonely Soul,” is a setting of a poem by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba, one of Venezuela’s great “Bards of the Plains.” In Latin American folk tradition, the ánima sola is a soul suspended between this world and the next, longing for what lies on the other side. Torrealba draws on this image to evoke the solitude and mystery of the llanos, the vast high plains of Venezuela, where a lone tree stands as a silent witness to the passage of time and the passage of souls. The music moves between stillness and exuberance, contrasting moments of quiet meditation with the joropo, a lively traditional Venezuelan dance where the choir imitates the instruments of the joropo ensemble: the top voices imitate the diatonic harp, while the rest of the choir takes the rhythm of the cuatro, a small four-stringed guitar.

07/16/2026

New concert video 🎧 may you be free, loved, and held

“Awasis”
Composed by Andrew Balfour
Artistic Director Elizabeth Kimble
Video by Zach Miley Productions
April 2026
San Francisco

Awasis is a Cree word meaning “child.” Canadian composer Andrew Balfour is of Cree heritage and has made it his life’s work to explore Indigenous history and identity through music, using it as a powerful entry point to healing. That mission is deeply personal: as an infant, Balfour himself was taken from his family as part of the “Sixties Scoop.” The Sixties Scoop was part of a longer legacy of Indian Residential Schools, where generations of Indigenous children were removed from their families, forbidden from speaking their languages, and stripped of their cultures. Tragically, many children died at these schools, far from their families and their home. Balfour describes Awasis as a sound prayer: a dedication to the memory of those children and an act of love across the boundary of death. In the spirit world, he tells us, they are free, loved, and held by their ancestors.

A new professional vocal ensemble is about to debut in the Bay Area choral scene 🎬On Sunday, July 26, Staff & Ledger wil...
07/12/2026

A new professional vocal ensemble is about to debut in the Bay Area choral scene 🎬

On Sunday, July 26, Staff & Ledger will make their debut performance under founding director Kory Reid, with FIVE world premieres by Eric Choate, Jeffrey Parola, and Eric Tuan. Musae will join them and perform a set of our favorite tunes, including works by Don Macdonald, Dan Forrest, Marie-Claire Saindon, and Eric Tuan.

Come join us in celebrating Bay Area musicians and enjoy an afternoon of music at Kanbar Performing Arts Center in San Francisco. Enter code MUSAE for a friends and family discount at checkout đŸŽŸïž tickets at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/staff-ledger-tickets-1992709629143

Staff & Ledger was founded by artists from Chanticleer, Volti, Clerestory, Byrd Ensemble, Aeternum, Fog City Singers, American Bach, and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus to champion music that belongs in today’s cultural rotation alongside the films, books, albums, and games that pull us in, stay with us, and shape how we experience the world. That kind of art deserves to travel.

We hope you will join us to show your support for choral music in the Bay Area!

07/09/2026

New concert video 🎧 for a daily dose of tenderness.

“I’ve Got a Mother Gone to Glory”
Traditional Appalachian folk song, arranged by Amy Stuart Hunn
Artistic Director Elizabeth Kimble
Video by Zach Miley Productions
April 2026
San Francisco

This traditional Appalachian song gazes toward a golden shore beyond this life. Rooted in the shape-note and revival singing traditions of the southern Appalachian mountains, the song is a quiet declaration of faith and a tender expression of grief: loved ones gone ahead, a reunion promised somewhere over yonder.

07/02/2026

New concert video 🎧 for a daily dose of fearlessness!

“Dayung Sampan”
Traditional Singaporean folk song, arranged by Darius Lim
Artistic Director Elizabeth Kimble
Video by Zach Miley Productions
April 2026
San Francisco

Dayung Sampan, meaning “Row the Sampan,” began as an Indonesian folk song before being taken up by immigrants who came to Singapore in the 19th century. Arranged by Singaporean composer Darius Lim, the song celebrates these fearless immigrants in search of a new life, undaunted by the perilous ocean voyage, and pulled forward by the hope of what awaited them.

06/25/2026

New concert video 🎧 for a daily dose of hope!

“Spes” (full video on our YouTube channel)
Composed by Mia Makaroff
Artistic Director Elizabeth Kimble
Video by Zach Miley Productions
April 2026
San Francisco

Spes and doaivu are both words for hope, yet they come from vastly different traditions. Spes is Latin, the language used in the Catholic church, and doaivu is Sami, an indigenous language from Northern Scandinavia. These two cultures have often come into conflict, even though they both seek peace and understanding. In 2012, after centuries of oppression, the Bishop of Oulu, Finland formally asked for forgiveness from the Sami people.

Composer Mia Makaroff sets these two traditions in dialogue, weaving text from Ecclesiastes with the poetry of Nils Aslak ValkeapÀÀ, a beloved Såmi singer, poet, and artist. Ecclesiastes asks who among us is truly wise, and reminds us that no one can stop the wind or forestall death. ValkeapÀÀ wrote from a similar place of acceptance: I belong to the wind, but I live. Maybe that is the meaning of life. Both texts share the same insight, that humility before what we cannot control is what softens us, and that hope is present whenever people are humble enough to seek understanding.

Address

Mission Bay Blocks 29-32
San Francisco, CA
94158

Website

,

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Musae posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Establishment

Send a message to Musae:

Shortcuts

Share

Category