VOICES WITHIN
exploring the connection between cello and voice
Upcoming Performances
About:
Voices Within explores the intimate and organic connection between the human voice and the cello, two sound worlds that have always felt deeply intertwined for me. To me, singing is one of the purest forms of music making. There is no external instrument and no layer between expression and sound. It is immediate, vulnerable, and intensely personal, creating a kind of magic that reaches straight to the soul. Perhaps that is why the cello resonated with me at such an early age, as it is often described as the instrument closest to the human voice.
Originally launched in July 2025 with support from the #MusikerZukunft Stipendium by the Deutsche Orchesterstiftung, Voices Within premiered in venues across Germany and later throughout Europe. The concerts were met with enthusiastic responses from audiences and fellow musicians alike, affirming that this project is not simply a standalone event, but an essential part of my evolving artistic journey.
WIDENING CIRCLES composed for the first edition Voices Within, inhabits the liminal space between instrumental sound and voice, gently dissolving the traditional distinction between cellist and singer. The work takes its inspiration from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “I live my life in widening circles” from The Book of Hours. Echoing the poem’s image of circles that spiral outward and expand through eternity, the music unfolds through a series of circling motifs that gradually grow, recede, and return. These gestures evoke cycles of breath and motion, suggesting the ebb and flow of human experience.
While performing the cello part, Juliet Wolff simultaneously sings sustained tones, creating a fragile and resonant sonic space in which breath, pitch, and instrumental timbre intertwine. In collaboration with pianist Yelyzaveta Rodionova, the music develops with quiet intensity and careful pacing. The dialogue between cello, voice, and piano moves between intimacy and subtle tension, forming a continuously transforming acoustic field and reflecting the title’s image of gradually widening circles of sound. From within these sonic circles, the voice merges and resonates with an identity of its own.
In this way, Widening Circles becomes both a meditation on breath and resonance and a celebration of the human voice — the process of discovering one’s voice and the upward, expanding journey it represents.
Featured Composer 2025
Michaela Catranis
Jeita" by Michaela Rea Catranis, emerged...as something like a musical allegory of the cave, an earthly meditation as a sonorous, moving narration of a single, lonely voice. The immense "TONALi" festival in the Elbphilharmonie ended with such a courageous appeal to the inner world." Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, Edition Faust-Kultur
"I write about our humanness, our connection to each other and the world around us, both natural and digital worlds. It could be like Laughter or a Prayer, or maybe a Shadow, muscles and sinew rippling, a Kiss. The movements of Love, trembling, electric, or a Scream, life tearing through the flesh of a Mother, a tiny heart beating, new against her chest, both of them still dripping from her wound, washed in blood. The Body, charged up with Soul, spirit-stuff and the ecstasy of the moment. Being. It is all this, a Polyphony of human experience, so brief, sensuous, writhing, soft, dirty, naked, full of rage, of joy, of tenderness. It's a courageous smile and then some silence too. It is how I talk to you, with moonbeams in my eyes; a conversation between lovers." ~ Michaela Catranis
With a strong background in classical piano, Michaela Catranis' eclectic tastes have led her to explore experimental music, electronic, jazz and beyond, crafting a highly versatile sonic language. Her multi-media performances have received international acclaim, sound worlds that spin out in a colorful exchange of disciplines, criss-crossing music, art, technology and dance. This process of collective art-making lies at the heart of Michaela’s work, which she feels echoes our shared humanity, a thirst for togetherness born from her experiences growing up in a family of eleven. She derives inspiration from her classical training, playing with the family band, SPACE CATS, as well as non-classical sonorities that she’s collected from her travels and walks in the forest.
In 2018, she won the TONALi18 Composition Prize. The following year, she was awarded the Contemporary Arts Alliance-Berlin Scholarship, commissioned by Ensemble Modern as part of the Composer's Seminar/Cresc. Biennale for Contemprary Music and selected as composer laureate of the Académie Voix Nouvelles - Royaumont. Her works have been performed internationally in concert halls such as the ElbphilharmonieHamburg, the Berliner Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall and the KKL Lucerne. She has written for the Mivos Quartet, Zafraan Ensemble, RIOT, Ensemble Modern, KNM, among others, and works closely with soprano, Johanna Vargas, and Berlin-based Duo Amabile. Michaela holds degrees in piano performance from the Peabody Conservatory and composition from the Hanns Eisler School of Music.
Michaela Rea Catranis talks about her inspiration behind Widening Circles
With generous support from the #MusikerZukunftStipendium of the German Orchestra Foundation