The San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) launches its 2023-2024 season with This Is What It Means, a concert featuring the Premier Ensemble co-presented and performed with Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE) as part of the statewide California Festival. Minnesota Public Radio describes the SFGC as “smooth, perfect, yet very identifiable” while Gramophone praises their “beauty of tone, exceptional agility and keen attention to words.” Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe leads the Premier Ensemble and LCCE in a program centering the voices of Californian women composers, which interweaves instrumental and vocal works by Pauline Oliveros, Gabriela Lena Frank, Reena Esmail, Gabriella Smith, Lisa Bielawa, Ursula Kwong-Brown, Nicolás Lell Benavides, Caroline Shaw, and Hildegard von Bingen. The two ensembles join together in this performance for the world premiere of Los Angeles-based composer Sarah Gibson’s This is what it means, co-commissioned by the two ensembles. Gibson's music has been described as "expansive" by the Los Angeles Times, and has been performed by the BBC and Los Angeles Philharmonics, Atlanta, Seattle, and New Jersey Symphonies, and more.