Kitka performs Wintersongs at Filoli's Winter Celebration!

Enjoy the shortest day of the year at this mid-winter fête. This adult-focused celebration will feature several activities in the Garden to honor the allure of this magical night, such as a ceremonial lighting ritual, and meditation. Begin the evening with a glass of sparkling wine and light hors-d’oeuvres, included with your ticket. All of Holidays at Filoli, including Garden Lights, will be open for your enjoyment. Wine, beer, and coffee will be available for purchase.

Wintersongs is Kitka's critically-acclaimed and wildly popular winter holiday program showcasing seasonal music from a wide variety of Eastern European ethnic and spiritual traditions.

For countless centuries, people around the world have utilized the power or community singing to infuse warmth, cheer, spirituality, wishes for peace, health, and good fortune into the long, dark, cold and difficult winter season.

Eastern Europe's geographic position as a crossroads between Europe and the Orient has produced an astonishingly rich and varied array of seasonal musical rituals. Kitka's program features songs ranging from rousing Slavic folk carols; to lush meditative Eastern Orthodox sacred choral works; to Baltic pagan incantations for the return of the Sun Goddess, to Caucasus Georgian Alilos (hallelujahs); to Yiddish, Sephardic, and Hebrew songs for Chanukah; to Bosnian-Muslim ilahijas (devotional hymns); to rhythmic Balkan Romany ("Gypsy") tunes for the winter festivals of Vasilica and Kurban Bajram. 

Traditional pieces will be woven together with new folk song arrangements and original compositions by Kitka members and contemporary American and Eastern European composers, all inspired by the customs, beauty, and mystery of wintertime.

Photo by Tomas Pacha