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What happens when a woman takes power?
That’s not a rhetorical or trick question. It’s the title of a local youth choir’s upcoming spring concert slated for May 18 in Palo Alto, at which around 75 teens will perform.
The genre-agnostic concert is organized by Cantabile Youth Singers, which is a 30-year-old community nonprofit helmed by choral conductor Elena Sharkova, who has served as artistic director of the organization since 2004.
“What Happens When A Woman Takes Power?” is the title of the central piece that the choir will perform. “It’s a piece with very strong lyrics,” said Sharkova, during an interview over Zoom, about the interrogative song, written by a women’s trio called Artemisia. “It’s practically a song of protest.”
Sharkova has in fact been teaching her students several protest songs over the years, for example “Hymn to Freedom,” “We Shall Overcome,” “Imagine,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “March for Our Lives.”
“It’s one of those things that I teach my students; I give them a lot of tools on how to be leaders,” she said. “How do you, for instance, lead a public protest? Where do they teach you that? Well, I teach them that, but I teach it through song. These are all songs that you can start singing in the streets; it doesn’t necessarily have to be political.”
This concert’s theme is close to Sharkova’s heart. “As a performer, as a conductor, as a leader, I choose a focus … my idea was to bring as many women composers, women lyricists into the programs,” she said. “If we were to say ‘for the next five years we’ll only sing and play music by women composers,’ we would never run out of music! It’s incredible. When I started digging, I was ashamed that there were so many women composers that I didn’t know (about)!”
Cantabile’s most recent concert was similarly themed; the May 4 show was titled “She Who Lights the Way.”
“It was a celebration of women who lit the way for a family, for a community.” Sharkova said.
She asked her students to write a paragraph about women they’re inspired by. While many of them wrote about famous personalities like Ruth Bader Ginsburg for instance, many also said they take inspiration from the women in their own lives, like their grandmothers, mothers, aunts and teachers.
“I wanted the families to know about each other,” she said. “It’s my constant wish, desire, passion to make our families understand that this is not just a choir. This is a community where we enrich each other.”
Her effort to push the cause goes beyond her work at Cantabile. Her recent concert titled “In Her Own Voice” with Florida-based vocal ensemble Seraphic Fire, was also based along similar lines.
At Cantabile, Sharkova integrates her knowledge of the energetic arts, like qi gong, tai chi and yoga, to bring in aspects like movement, mindfulness and meditation into the musical experience. It’s something she started including in her rehearsals around 15 years ago, all in a bid to help her students focus better.
“I could not get the students to be fully present in the moment; they come from school, absolutely crazed, after sitting down the whole day. It’s important for them to relax,” she said. “If you’re stressed all your muscles are going to be tight and you’re not going to sound good.”
Besides Cantabile, Sharkova also works as director of choral music at Symphony San Jose. She began her music career in Russia as an ensemble singer in a professional choir. After completing her graduate studies in St. Petersburg, she moved to the United States where she continued to build a musical career in academics and on stage. She has worked as a guest conductor in over 30 countries.
“The hardest thing for me is to make people here in Silicon Valley realize how important music and performance and arts are to their children, to themselves,” she said.
Sharkova is a role model for her students. “She’s really an inspiring female figure,” said Asha Aggarwal, junior at Woodside High School, who is performing on the 18th. She has been with Cantabile for the last eight years.
Among other things, Aggarwal appreciates the stories Sharkova tells her students to get them interested in a piece and to understand its history and origin. “Her emphasis on precision and passion is something that she lives by,” said the 16-year-old resident of Redwood City. “She has both physical style in terms of her fashion sense and she’s also got musical style and that is something I haven’t seen in a lot of other conductors.”
At the concert, Aggarwal will sing in the choir, as part of a group called Aria, and will also perform solo. “For me personally it’s always been easier to be in a group and to be in a team and to work together to create what my conductor, when we do well, likes to call magic,” she said. All the same, she is looking forward to her solo performance. “It’s going to be something that I step out of my comfort zone for … but this one seemed right for me.”
She feels strongly about the theme of the concert and said the boys in the choir do too. “Our young generation is so willing to put the right people in power and they recognize that women deserve that power,” said Aggarwal, who is interested in studying neuroscience, especially exploring the connection between music and the brain. “Music will always hold a strong place in my life no matter where I go in my career.”
“What Happens When A Woman Takes Power?” by Cantabile Youth Singers will take place on May 18 at 1 p.m. at First Unified Methodist Church, Palo Alto. $10 students/$35 general admission/$75 benefactor tickets. cantabile.org.
