SAN FRANCISCO, May 3, 2011—Chanticleer, the renowned 12-member ensemble described by The New Yorker as “the world’s reigning male chorus,” launches its 2011-12 Bay Area season on September 16 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, with the first of 26 concerts that the Grammy winning ensemble will give at venues throughout Northern California.
Season highlights include a new 3-movement work by Stephen Sametz; new contemporary arrangements by Vince Peterson of “Cells Planets” fame; the premiere of “What Did I Fight For” a multi-media venture featuring Brent Michael-David’s soundtrack to the early American film “Leatherstocking;” and a performance of the entire “Credo/Ani ma’amin” by Shulamit Ran. This will be the third season for Matthew Oltman as Music Director.
LOVE STORY (Five concerts Sept. 15 – 20)
The inexhaustible story of love provides the inspiration for the first program of the season beginning in September. Love, an emotion both enchanting and disturbing, has evoked more poetry and music than any other, and Chanticleer presents inspired music by a wide variety of composers through the ages including Sebastián de Vivanco, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Daniel-Lesur, Sametz, Tavener, Whitacre, Paulus, and more.
A CHANTICLEER CHRISTMAS (11 Concerts, Dec. 10 – 23)
Chanticleer’s sumptuous blend of voices again rings in the holiday season with profound, peaceful, and joyous music in beautifully decorated missions, churches and cathedrals around the Bay area. Now a holiday classic throughout the country, featured in four consecutive annual appearances by Chanticleer on NBC TV’s Today Show, A Chanticleer Christmas has received the highest acclaim, with the New Yorker declaring, “No one does a better choral Christmas than the virtuoso male voices of Chanticleer.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK I FOUGHT FOR? (4 Concerts, March 31 – April 4, 2012)
In early April, Chanticleer presents four very personal musical reflections on conflict that will be accompanied by film, video, and personal testimony. This provocative program also features Chanticleer’s first film score.
1. Leatherstocking, a 16-minute 1909 film by D.W. Griffith, based on James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, with a score composed specially for Chanticleer and hand drums by Brent Michael-Davids, a member of the Stockbridge Mohican nation.
2. Credo/ani ma’amin commissioned by Chanticleer by the Pulitzer prize winning American composer Shulamit Ran, features texts that recall the Holocaust of WWII and the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. This will be the first performance of the piece in its entirety -- an abridged version was featured on the album “And on Earth Peace, A Chanticleer Mass.”
3. The Garden of Paradise by Shawn Crouch, set to poetry by anti-war Iraq soldier Brian Turner.
4. What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? -- the West Coast Premiere of Melissa Dunphy’s celebrated work based on a moving speech made by World War II veteran, Philip Spooner on the senate floor of the Maine statehouse.
MISSION ROAD (6 Concerts, June 2 – 9, 2012)
Chanticleer has gloried in the beauty and perfect acoustics of the California missions ever since its very first 1978 concert in the Mission Dolores. Mission Road will see the Ensemble back on the historic route, with an entirely new program co-created by musicologist Craig Russell and Chanticleer Music Director Matthew Oltman, featuring recent discoveries of centuries-old music written in the New World during the period of Spanish colonialism. The program will be presented in six historic California Missions from San Luis Obispo to San Francisco.
Chanticleer will embark on two major European tours in the 2011-12 season. The first in August will encompass prestigious festivals such as Bremen, Rheingau, and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, La Chaise Dieu in France, and finish with a debut at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. Performances elsewhere in France and Germany, and in Poland, Austria and Italy complete the tour. The ensemble returns to Europe in January for performances in some of the world’s legendary concert halls including Prague’s legendary Rudolfinum, the Bela Bartok National Concert Hall in Budapest, Musikverein in Vienna, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Philharmonic Hall in Vilnius, and others.
Chanticleer’s 2010-11 season featured the release of a number of new recordings, including best-loved concerts from the past: “A Chanticleer Christmas” from live performances in Stanford’s Memorial Church, “Out of this World,” heard in the Bay Area in September, “Ludus Paschalis” from 2000, and “The Boy Whose Father was God” – the acclaimed concert from March of this year. These are all available for Chanticleer’s digital storefront.
Chanticleer was awarded Chorus America’s prestigious Education and Outreach Award for 2010, and takes pride in its annual interaction with more than 5,000 students around the Bay Area and the U.S. The ensemble recently launched its newest educational program, introducing a small, mixed youth chorus for Bay Area singers aged 14-20 known as the Louis A. Botto (LAB) Choir in honor of Louis A Botto, the founder and original Artistic Director of Chanticleer. The upcoming season will feature Bay Area High School and Middle School Festivals in the fall, as well as festivals, master classes and lecture concerts on both national and international tours.
Called “America’s favorite choral ensemble,” by the New Yorker magazine, Chanticleer has developed a worldwide reputation for its impeccable musicianship, beauty of sound, and wide-ranging repertoire from Renaissance and Mexican Baroque to jazz, gospel, folk, and adventurous new music. Chanticleer Records releases live and studio recordings on CD and in downloads, and both may be found through the organization’s website: www.chanticleer.org.
Subscriptions for the season ($76 - $160) are now available, and may be obtained online at www.chanticleer.org, where additional information may be found. Single tickets go on sale August 1.
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Northern California Calendar for the 2011 – 2012 Season
LOVE STORY September 16 - 21
San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Sept 16, 8 pm
Mission Santa Clara, Sept 17, 8 pm
St. Francis, Sacramento, Sept 18, 5 pm
Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, Sept 20, 8 pm
San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Sept. 21, 8 pm
A CHRISTMAS CHANTICLEER December 10-23, 2011
Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland, Dec 10, 8:15 pm
St. Vincent, Petaluma, Dec 11, 6 & 8:30 pm
Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Sacramento, Dec 14, 8 pm
St. Ignatius, San Francisco, Dec 17, 8 pm
First Congregational Church, Berkeley, Dec 18, 8 pm
Carmel Mission, Dec 21, 6 & 8:30 pm
Mission Santa Clara, Dec 22, 6 & 8:30 pm
St. Ignatius, San Francisco, Dec 23, 8 pm
WHAT DO YOU THINK I FOUGHT FOR? March 31 – April 4, 2012
Koret auditorium, De Young Museum, San Francisco, March 31, 8 pm
Koret auditorium, De Young Museum, San Francisco, April 1, 2 pm
First Congregational Church, Berkeley, April 3, 8 pm
Menlo-Atherton High School Pac Theater, Atherton, April 4, 8 pm
MISSION ROAD June 2-9, 2012
Mission Dolores, San Francisco, June 2, 8 pm
Mission San Jose, Fremont, June 3, 5 pm
Mission Santa Clara, June 4, 8 pm
Carmel Mission, June 7, 8 pm
Mission San Luis Obispo, June 8, 8 pm
Mission Santa Barbara, June 9, 8 pm
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