San Francisco, CA – November 6, 2019 – Chanticleer welcomes the holidays with its beloved annual tradition, A Chanticleer Christmas, with eleven performances in beautifully decorated churches and missions across the Bay Area, December 10 through 23. A selection of longtime audience favorites, including music from the Renaissance to joyful spirituals and traditional carols, will be featured alongside music new to Chanticleer’s festive repertoire.
The program will be performed on eleven occasions at eight different venues throughout the Bay Area: Tuesday, December 10 at 8:00 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; Saturday, December 14 at 8:00 p.m., St. Ignatius Church, San Francisco; Sunday, December 15 at 5:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., St. Vincent Church, Petaluma; Monday, December 16 at 8:00 p.m., Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Sacramento; Thursday, December 19 at 6:00 p.m. & 8:30 p.m., Mission Santa Clara, Santa Clara; Saturday, December 21 at 8:15 p.m., Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland; Sunday, December 22 at 8:00 p.m., St. Ignatius Church, San Francisco; and Monday, December 23 at 6:00 p.m. & 8:30 p.m., Carmel Mission, Carmel.
A Chanticleer Christmas has provided transcendent moments of peace and joy to sold out Bay Area audiences for more than 40 years ever since the ensemble was invited to participate in a Christmas concert at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral shortly after its 1978 founding. The tranquility introduced by a candlelit procession of Gregorian Chant and the celebration of the nativity through timeless music from all centuries, is the hallmark of A Chanticleer Christmas. The program features audience favorites such as In dulce jubilo by Michael Praetorius, Ave Maria by Franz Biebl, A spotless rose by Herbert Howells and Gaudete by Steven Sametz. Arranged for Chanticleer in 2017, Rosephanye’s Powell’s medley of Christmas spirituals will bring the program to a joyous close.
Describing the Bay Area’s array of holiday musical offerings, the San Jose Mercury News praised A Chanticleer Christmas as “one of the most consistently rewarding” and “sublimely beautiful” while the San Francisco Chronicle called it “a burst of exuberant and soulful yuletide fare ranging across more than a dozen centuries.”
A Chanticleer Christmas will also be presented as part of the ensemble’s U.S. tour, November 29 through December 8, with nine performances across the East Coast and Midwest including Fairfax and Manassas, VA; New York, NY; Mountain Lakes, NJ and Chicago, IL. Additional tour performances will be given at Stanford University’s Memorial Church (December 11) and Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (December 17). American Public Media offers a broadcast of the program, recorded at New York's St. Ignatius Loyola, on over 300 member stations nation-wide during the holiday season.
Single tickets to A Chanticleer Christmas Bay Area range in price from $30 to $79 and can be purchased through City Box Office: http://www.cityboxoffice.com and (415) 392-4400. Senior and Student discounted tickets are available with a flat $5 discount on all ticket prices.
For further information, please visit http://www.chanticleer.org. Media contacts are listed at the end of the release.
CALENDAR EDITORS, PLEASE NOTE:
A Chanticleer Christmas
December 10-23
Tuesday, December 10, 2019, 8:00 p.m.
First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley
Saturday, December 14, 2019, 8:00 p.m.
St. Ignatius Church, 650 Parker Street, San Francisco
Sunday, December 15, 2019, 5:00 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
St. Vincent Church, 35 Liberty Street, Petaluma
Monday, December 16, 2019, 8:00 p.m.
Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, 1017 Eleventh Street, Sacramento
Thursday, December 19, 2019, 6:00 p.m. & 8:30 p.m.
Mission Santa Clara, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara
Saturday, December 21, 2019, 8:15 p.m.
Cathedral of Christ the Light, 2121 Harrison Street, Oakland
Sunday, December 22, 2019, 8:00 p.m.
St. Ignatius Church, 650 Parker Street, San Francisco
Monday, December 23, 2019, 6:00 p.m. & 8:30 p.m.
Carmel Mission, 3080 Rio Road, Carmel
PROGRAM
Renaissance works including:
Josquin de Prez: Missus est Gabriel angelus
Jacob Handl: Canite tuba in Sion
Francisco López Capillas: Cui luna, sol et omnia
Michael Praetorius: In dulci jubilo à 8 and Quem pastores laudavere
Peter Philips: Gaudens gaudebo
Trond Kverno: Corpus Christi Carol
Franz Biebl: Ave Maria
Herbert Howells: A Spotless Rose
Traditional Carols including:
John Jacob Niles (1892-1980), arr. John Rutter: I Wonder as I Wander
Trad. English, arr. Sir David Willcocks: I Saw Three Ships
Trad. French, arr. A.B. Ramsay and Willcocks: Quelle est cette odeur agréable
Trad. American, arr. Shaw/Parker: Away in a Manager
ABOUT CHANTICLEER
Called “the world’s reigning male chorus” by the New Yorker, the San Francisco-based GRAMMY® award-winning ensemble Chanticleer has just celebrated the 40th anniversary of its 1978 founding. During the 2019-20 season Chanticleer will perform 57 concerts in 28 of the United States and Puerto Rico, 21 concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 10 on a European tour to Germany, France, Poland, and Italy. At the end of the 2019-20 season, Chanticleer will return to Australia for the first time since 1997 for 10 concerts in 8 cities, and make its debut in New Zealand.
Chanticleer’s education programs engage over 5,000 young people annually. The Louis A. Botto (LAB) Choir—an after-school honors program for high school and college students—is now in its eighth year, adding to the ongoing program of in-school clinics and workshops; Youth Choral Festivals™ in the Bay Area and around the country; Skills/LAB–an intensive summer workshop for 50 high school students; master classes for university students nationwide. Chanticleer’s education program was recognized with the 2010 Chorus America Education Outreach Award.
Since Chanticleer began releasing recordings in 1981, the group has sold well over a million albums and won two GRAMMY® awards. Chanticleer’s recordings are distributed by Chanticleer Records, Naxos, ArkivMusic, Amazon, and iTunes among others, and are available on Chanticleer’s website: www.chanticleer.org.
Named for the “clear-singing” rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chanticleer was founded in 1978 by tenor Louis A. Botto, who sang in the Ensemble until 1989 and served as Artistic Director until his death in 1997. Chanticleer became known first for its interpretations of Renaissance music, and was later a pioneer in the revival of the South American baroque, recording several award-winning titles in that repertoire. Chanticleer was named Ensemble of the Year by Musical America in 2008, and inducted in the American Classical Music Hall of Fame the same year. William Fred Scott was named Music Director in 2014. A native of Georgia, Scott is the former Assistant Conductor to Robert Shaw at the Atlanta Symphony, former Artistic Director of the Atlanta Opera, an organist and choir director.
PHOTO CREDITS
Chanticleer / Lisa Kohler
Press and Media Relations Contact:
Brenden Guy Media
Marketing & Public Relations
(415) 640-3165
brendenguy@gmail.com
marketing@chanticleer.org