CHANTICLEER CONCLUDES 35TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON WITH LA SERENISSIMA

Grammy-award winning, San Francisco-based "Orchestra of Voices" Chanticleer concludes its 35th anniversary season in June with a return to the Renaissance music it was founded to sing. Set in four beautiful Bay Area venues, these concerts feature the rich vocal traditions of Renaissance Venice–known as La Serenissima.

Choral composers working in Venice in the 1500s and early 1600s created a famed cosmopolitan style known as the “Venetian School,” writing for the splendid Basilica of San Marco whose unique interior boasted opposing choir lofts and spacious architecture. Exploiting its unique acoustics, Venetian composers developed a “polychoral” style featuring a grand harmonic language, complex rhythmic counterpoint, and spatially separated antiphonal choirs.

Chanticleer and its twelve professional singers–countertenor to contra bass–have a special affinity for this sumptuous repertoire, ranging from intimate chamber works to grandly celebratory double chorus works in twelve parts. Among the many composers represented is the widely admired founder of the Venetian School, Adrian Willaert, along with his disciples and successors, including more conservative artists such as Cipriano di Rore and Claudio Merulo, and progressive composers like Gioseffo Guami, Baldassare Donato, Giovanni Croce, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, and the great pre-Baroque genius Claudio Monteverdi. Chanticleer’s renowned expertise in interpreting Renaissance music promises to make this program an especially satisfying showcase of its core repertoire.

These appearances conclude an exciting season, the highlight of which was a birthday celebration reflecting on Chanticleer's first 35 years. The season also included 25 performances of A Chanticleer Christmas (also broadcast on over 330 public radio stations), and over 100 performances in 29 states, China, and Singapore of The Sirens Call – a program featuring the group's inimitably extensive repertoire.

Also this season, a new studio recording, By Request, and a live recording, The Sirens Call, were released by Chanticleer Records. The Louis A. Botto (LAB) Choir–under the direction of Ben Johns–completed its third season, offering advanced choral training to 55 Bay Area high school and college students.

For Calendar Editors:

Chanticleer presents

LA SERENISSIMA

First Congregational Church, Berkeley

June 12 at 8:00PM

Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph, San Jose

June 14 at 8:00PM

Mission Dolores, San Francisco

June 15 at 8:00PM

St. Francis of Assisi Church, Sacramento

June 16 at 5:00PM

Tickets: $10 - $50

City Box Office: 415-392-4400

Also online: www.chanticleer.org /