During the COVID pandemic, when everything seemed to stand still, perhaps you noticed how much sound there was in the quiet — bird song, wind, crickets, the buzz of hummingbird wings, squirrels rustling in the trees.  

Those sounds of nature are the inspiration for Cantabile Youth Singers’ spring concert, Sing With The Earth, at Mission Santa Clara on May 16. The concert unites all Cantabile’s choirs — from the youngest beginners to advanced high school students —in a shared celebration of nature’s song around the world. The concert also celebrates Cantabile’s 30th anniversary.

The concert features music inspired by birds, insects, and animals from around the world, reflecting the cultural diversity of the singers and their families.

“I got into listening to birds from different parts of the earth,” said longtime Cantabile music director Elena Sharkova, “and you know somebody who comes from Russia, our birds obviously very different from the birds of the Amazonian forest, for instance, are they higher [in pitch] in Amazon forest than in Russia.”

“Sound to me is everything,” she adds. “It’s the way I was trained and how sounds became such a part of me that I can never escape it.”

“The diverse backgrounds of singers was also inspiration,” said Sharkova. “When parents lived in India or Pakistan or Hungary or China. What did their morning sound like? When they were going to school and were listening to the morning birds, what did it sound like?”

In Sing with the Earth, younger choirs perform accessible pieces about creatures, like the kookaburra and nightingale, accompanied by recorded natural sounds weaving through the performance.

Older students perform more complicated works, including compositions by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), Claude Debussy (1862-1918), contemporary American composer Jake Runestad (1986), and Singaporean composer Daryl Slim. A constant thread — birdsong, forest sounds — connects each group of pieces, and a background of actual birdsongs draws the audience into the music.

“There’s this choir of birds in the same beautiful performing space of Mission Santa Clara,” said Sharkova, “as our singing ‘birds,’ which are our beautiful singers, our beautiful children.”

The concert takes place in Mission Santa Clara, chosen for its acoustics.

“It’s the perfect place for us, which to us means younger voices, lighter voices. There is such a thing as acoustics for treble voices, acoustics for a mixed choir,” said Sharkova.

Looking ahead, Cantabile is headed for Carnegie Hall next year for an East Coast premiere of a commissioned work by North Dakota composer Jocelyn Hagen (b. 1980). The group also tours England in June, performing with choirs in Cambridge and Manchester.

“My life is a great example,” Sharkova said, “of how choral music makes you a citizen of the world and brings you friends all over.”

Cantabile’s Sing With The Earth is on May 16, 2026, at Mission Santa Clara de Asís. There are two concerts — All Choir (12 p.m.) and Performance Division (2:30 p.m.). Tickets and more information are available at www.cantabile.org/performances-events.

Carolyn Schuk can be reached at carolyn@santaclaraweekly.com.

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