Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares

$25 GA / $45 Premium (reserved seating)

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Having enchanted a capacity audience at Grace Cathedral during the
2006 SFJAZZ Spring Season, the Grammy-winning choir “Le Mystère
des Voix Bulgares” returns for an encore “Sacred Space” performance
to commemorate this Silver Anniversary season.
Founded over half a century ago to preserve and promote Bulgarian
folk music, the all-female choir first achieved worldwide popularity
in the 1980s—beginning when the British independent label 4AD
(onetime home to the Cocteau Twins, Pixies, and Dead Can Dance)
re-released a Le Mystère compilation album self-issued a decade prior
by Swiss ethnomusicologist Marcel Cellier (who coined the group’s
French-language name, which translates to “The Mystery of Bulgarian
Voices”). In the late ’80s, U.S. releases on the tastemaker Nonesuch
label—the second of which earned a Grammy Award—exposed the
choir’s musical magic to an even broader audience. Members of Le
Mystère have since recorded with the likes of British art-rock singersongwriter
Kate Bush and classical crossover violinist Vanessa-Mae.
By employing traditional Bulgarian harmonies—simultaneously
dissonant and sublimely beautiful—vocal punctuations, and irregular
rhythms, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares performances fall under
the “sound of surprise” definition that Whitney Balliett once used to
describe jazz. As The New York Times’ Jon Pareles put it: “The choir of
two dozen women sounds both angelic and, to American ears, gorgeously
alien.”