Grammy-award winning ensemble Chanticleer will perform at Northwestern State University Tuesday, Nov. 1 at 7:30 p.m. in Magale Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. For ticket information, contact the School of Creative and Performing Arts at (318) 357-4522 or Director of Choral Activities Nicholaus Cummins at cumminsn@nsula.edu.
Called “the world’s reigning male chorus” by the New Yorker, the San Francisco based Chanticleer celebrates its 39th season in 2016-17, performing 52 concerts in 24 of the United States, 27 in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 15 in Ireland, Germany, Austria, France, Czech Republic, Hungary and Russia. Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for their “tonal luxuriance and crisply etched clarity,” Chanticleer is known around the world as “an orchestra of voices” for the seamless blend of its 12 male voices ranging from soprano to bass and its original interpretations of vocal literature, from Renaissance to jazz and popular genres, as well as contemporary composition.
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 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 began his tenure as Chanticleer’s fifth music director in 2015. 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.
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 chanticleer.org. Chanticleer will release a live recording of My Secret Heart on its Chanticleer Live in Concert (CLIC) series.
In 2014, Chorus America conferred the inaugural Brazeal Wayne Dennard Award on Chanticleer’s Music Director Emeritus Joseph H. Jennings to acknowledge his contribution to the African-American choral tradition during his 25-year (1983-2009) tenure as a singer and music director with Chanticleer. The hundred plus arrangements of African-American gospel, spirituals and jazz made by Jennings for Chanticleer have been given thousands of performances worldwide—live and on broadcast—and have been recorded by Chanticleer for Warner Classics and Chanticleer Records.
Chanticleer’s long-standing commitment to commissioning and performing new works was honored in 2008 by the inaugural Dale Warland/Chorus America Commissioning Award and the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming.