PERFORMANCES IN SIX NORTHERN CALIFORNIA MISSIONS
MAY 6-22, FOLLOWING APPEARANCES IN UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITES IN BOLIVIA, APRIL 24-27
SAN FRANCISCO, April 4, 2016—Chanticleer, the internationally renowned Grammy award-winning 12-man choral ensemble, revels in its long dedication to the music of the Missions of the Americas with Mission Road. The group will perform six concerts this May in historic California Missions from Santa Barbara to San Francisco.
Chanticleer has gloried in the beauty and perfect acoustics of the California Missions ever since its inaugural 1978 concert in the old Mission Dolores. In the 1990's Chanticleer was at the forefront of the revival of 17th and 18th century Mission period music, releasing two award-winning recordings for Teldec: Matins for the Virgin of Guadalupe and Mexican Baroque. This 2016 tour–the third since 2008 exclusively dedicated to Mission music–includes San Francisco, Carmel, Santa Clara, Santa Barbara, San Miguel, and Fremont. The program will have been performed in April in Bolivia's UNESCO World Heritage Site Missions of San Xavier and Concepción, as well as the church of San Roque for the International Music Festival
of American Renaissance & Baroque Music – Chiquitos Missions; a biannual event at which Chanticleer has been invited to represent the United States. Chanticleer’s participation at this festival was made possible with support by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Continuo for Mission Road will be provided by Craig Russell (guitar), Lisa Nauful (bassoon), and Chanticleer Music Director William Fred Scott (organ). Composers familiar and unfamiliar to Chanticleer audiences include: Juan de Araujo, Francisco Lopez, Hernando Franco, Antonio de Salazar, Manuel de Sumaya, Tomas Torrejon de Velasco, and Gaspar Fernandez. Featured in the program will be Juan de Padilla's “Missa Ego flos campi,” and a set of Villancicos in honor of San Ignacio de Loyola, transcribed and edited by Piotr Nawrot, S.J.
The program illuminates the musicological bridge from High Renaissance masters in Europe to the next generation of composers who studied that music and brought it to the New World. Much of this music originated in cathedrals of Mexico and was heard and performed in the Mission churches all over New Spain. Editions by Cal Poly Professor Craig H. Russell have a permanent place in Chanticleer's repertoire. Now treasures from the Bolivian archives will be added to the program. They have been exhumed, transcribed, and edited by Father Piotr Nawrot, founder and director of the International Music Festival of American Renaissance & Baroque Music, who has dedicated his life to the painstaking reconstruction of the more than 10,000 pages of music that have survived the ravages of time.
Participants in the fifteenth session of Chanticleer’s Louis A. Botto (LAB) Choir (a mixed youth chorus for Bay Area singers aged 14-20 established in 2010) will be singing a program called New Spain: Music from Mexico's Cathedrals and California's Missions at Bay Area elementary schools, churches, retirement homes and public spaces and in pre-concert performances at many of the Missions.
Mission Road is made possible by generous support from Dunard Fund USA, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, and National Endowment for the Arts.
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, which may be found online: www.chanticleer.org.
Tickets and information may be obtained online at www.chanticleer.org.
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