About Chanticleer

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Called "the world’s reigning male chorus," by the New Yorker magazine, and named 2008 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America, Chanticleer will perform more than 100 concerts in 2008-09, the GRAMMY Award-winning ensemble’s 31^st Season.  Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for their "tonal luxuriance and crisply etched clarity," Chanticleer will tour to 27 states across the United States this season, including appearances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In August 2008, the ensemble performed at prestigious festivals in France, Germany, Poland and Latvia. Debuts this year include five cities in the People’s Republic of China in May and in three in Ireland in July.  Highlights of fall 2008 were the release of The Mission Road a CD and DVD set featuring music from California’s vibrant mission period, and Chanticleer's induction into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in Cincinnati.

Chanticleer - based in San Francisco - is known around the world as "an orchestra of voices" for the seamless blend of its twelve male voices ranging from countertenor to bass and its original interpretations of vocal literature, from Renaissance to jazz, and from gospel to venturesome new music. 

Chanticleer’s 28-concert 2008-09 Bay Area Season opened in September with Wondrous Free – an appreciation of the 250^th anniversary of the first American song.  The program included the premiere of David Conte's The Homecoming about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the premiere of Eric Whitacre’s choral arrangement of his "Sleep My Child."  Chanticleer’s busy Christmas season included an appearance on NBC’s TODAY Show, performances of its beloved A Chanticleer Christmas around the country and the Bay Area and the program’s broadcast on over 225 national public radio stations.  Commissioned pieces from three highly recognized young composers – Mason Bates, Shawn Crouch and Tarik O’Regan – are premiered in March throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.   Masterpieces by Orlando di Lasso are featured in the June programs which conclude the Bay Area Season.

Chanticleer’s recordings are distributed by Chanticleer Records, Warner Classics and I-tunes. Let it Snow, a collection of Christmas music released in 2007, was on the BillBoard charts for twelve weeks.  Colors of Love won the GRAMMY® Award in 2000 for Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without Conductor) and the Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award for Best Classical Album.  The world-premiere recording of Sir John Tavener’s Lamentations and Praises was released in January 2002 to critical acclaim and garnered two GRAMMY® awards for Classical Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without Conductor) and for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. The DVD accompanying Chanticleer’s most recent release Mission Road, has been broadcast on public television.

With the help of individual contributions and foundation and corporate support, the Ensemble involves thousands of young people annually in its extensive education program which includes in-school clinics and workshops, Chanticleer Youth Choral Festivals™ in the Bay Area and around the country, master classes for university students nationwide, and the Chanticleer in Sonoma summer workshop for adult choral singers.  2008 saw the release of The Singing Life - a documentary about Chanticleer’s work with young people.

Chanticleer’s long-standing commitment to commissioning and performing new works was recognized in 2008 by the inaugural Dale Warland Commissioning Award and   the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming for the 2006-07 Season in which in which ten new works were premiered.  Among the seventy composers commissioned in Chanticleer’s history are Mark Adamo, Régis Campo, Chen Yi, David Conte, Douglas J. Cuomo, Brent Michael Davids, Anthony Davis, Guido López-Gavilán, William Hawley, Jake Heggie, Jackson Hill, Kamran Ince, Jeeyoung Kim, Tania León, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, Michael McGlynn, John Musto, Shulamit Ran, Bernard Rands, Steven Sametz, Carlos Sanchez-Guttierez, Paul Schoenfield, Steven Stucky, John Tavener, Augusta Read Thomas and Janike Vandervelde.

Named for the "clear-singing" rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chanticleer was founded in 1978 by tenor Louis Botto, who sang in the Ensemble until 1989 and served as Artistic Director until his death in 1997. In 1999, Christine Bullin joined Chanticleer as President & General Director. Artistic Advisor Joseph Jennings joined the ensemble as a countertenor in 1983, and shortly thereafter assumed the title of Music Director which he held until 2008. Mr. Jennings has arranged some of Chanticleer’s most popular repertoire, most notably spirituals, gospel music, and jazz standards.  In 2008, tenor Matthew Oltman was named Music Director.

Chanticleer is the recipient of major grants from The Alexander Gerbode Foundation, The Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, The Walter and Elise Haas Fund, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The Bernard Osher Foundation, Wells Fargo Bank, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, and The National Endowment for the Arts. Chanticleer’s activities as a not-for-profit corporation are supported by its administrative staff and Board of Trustees.

Chanticleer^® and An Orchestra of Voices^® are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.