CHANTICLEER
YOUTH CHORAL FESTIVAL COMES TO FRESNO FOR THE FIRST TIME
Some
400 Students from Six Central Valley High Schools to Work and Sing with
GRAMMY-winning Classical Vocal Ensemble
San
Francisco, November 17, 2004--Chanticleer, the internationally acclaimed,
12-man vocal ensemble, is expanding its successful Youth Choral Festival™
to California's Central Valley on January 13, 2005 at Sunnyside High School
in Fresno. The Youth Choral Festival is an opportunity for hundreds of
choral students to work on singing skills and learn from a world-renowned
professional group.
Approximately
400 students from six Central Valley
high school choirs will participate in Chanticleer's Central Valley
Youth Choral Festival 2005. Music Director Joseph Jennings and
the men of Chanticleer will work with the six student groups in a day-long
series of workshops, group rehearsals and skill-building sessions. This
year's participating groups are: Buchanan High School (Clovis);
Clovis High
School, Clovis
East High
School, and Clovis
West High
School (Clovis); Selma High School
(Selma) and Sunnyside
High School (Fresno).
The
Central ValleyYouth Choral Festival is being coordinated by Sunnyside High School
choir director, Bob Bullwinkel, who notes, “Working with Chanticleer,
possibly the finest vocal ensemble in the world, will be a life-changing
experience for our students. It's kind of like the Boston Red Sox coming
to work-out with our high school baseball teams!”
In
addition to the Youth Choral Festivals in San Francisco
and Fresno,
the ensemble and Music Director Jennings conduct classes and mini-concerts
in some two dozen Bay Area schools annually and on tour as the schedule
permits. Additional educational residencies will take place in Spring
2005 at the Bass Center for the Performing Arts in Fort
Worth, Texas and in Morrow,
Georgia under
the auspices of Spivey Hall.
Funding
for the Youth Choral Festival has been provided by The William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation and The James Irvine Foundation.
Hailed
by the New Yorker magazine as “the world's reigning male chorus,”
and praised by the Los Angeles Times for its “luxurious perfection,”
Chanticleer has developed a remarkable reputation for its vivid
interpretations of vocal literature, from Renaissance to jazz and from
gospel to adventurous new music. The GRAMMY® Award-winning vocal ensemble
in 2004-05 performs over 75 concerts in 28 states across the United States,
including a 26-concert Bay Area season that features world and North American
premieres. The ensemble's 28th CD, How Sweet the Sound:
Spirituals and Traditional Gospel Music, debuted in September 2004
and climbed to number four on the BILLBOARD Classical Crossover chart.
Since 1994, Chanticleer has recorded exclusively for Teldec/Warner Classics
International.
Contact: Nancy
Roberts, 415-252-8589 ext. 306, nroberts@chanticleer.org
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