Chanticleer

PARADISE:

Chanticleer explores humanity’s eternal longing for the ideal: visions of a perfect world, perfect love, or perfect future. Spanning centuries, cultures, and styles, this program invites audiences into a luminous meditation on paradise. The program reveals a Paradise longed for, imagined, and fleetingly glimpsed through song. Included are songs of praise by Renaissance composers Jean Mouton and Juan Gutierrez de Padilla, as well as sacred manifestations of paradise, with Darius Milhaud’s "Psalm 121" and Bobby McFerrin’s "The 23rd Psalm." Perfect love, both earthly and divine, finds expression in Giovanni Valentini’s "Adoramus Te, Christe" and Jean Sibelius’s epic Finnish love song, "Rakastava." A collection of contemporary songs rounds out the program. Included are arrangements of Richard Evans’s "Journey to Recife" and Manuel Sánchez Acosta’s "Paraiso Soñado," which remind us that sometimes the only thing between us and Paradise is a plane, a train, or a dream.

Repertoire list is subject to change:
- Psaume 121 – Darius Milhaud (1892–1974)
- The 23rd Psalm – Bobby McFerrin (b. 1950)
- Gloria from Messe de Nostre Dame – Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377)
- In Paradisum from Requiem – Eleanor Daley (b. 1955)
- Coenantibus Autem Illis – Juan de Lienas (fl. 167–1654)
- Gloria from Missa Diligam Te Domine a 12 – Giovanni Valentini (c. 1582–1649)
- Rakastava – Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
- Unending Love – Eric Tuan (b. 1990)
- Ubi Caritas – Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986)
- Little Blue – Jacob Collier (b. 1994), arr. Jared Graveley
- Journey to Recife – Richard Evans (1932-2014), arr. Joseph H. Jennings
- There Is a Balm in Gilead – Traditional African American Spiritual, arr. Joseph H. Jennings
- Walk in Jerusalem – Traditional African American Spiritual, arr. Joseph H. Jennings
- Home – Charlie Smalls (1943–1987), arr. Jared Graveley
- Dear Sahana – Sid Sriram (b. 1990), arr. Jared Graveley
- I’ll Fly Away – Albert E. Brumley (1905–1977), arr. Tim Keeler
- Paraiso Soñado – Manuel Sánchez Acosta (1914–2006), arr. Juan Tony Guzmán
- Shenandoah – Traditional American Folk Song, arr. Marshall Bartholomew and James Erb

More on Chanticleer:

The Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer has been hailed by the Boston Globe as "breathtaking in its accuracy of intonation, purity of blend, of color and swagger of style." Founded in San Francisco in 1978 by singer and musicologist Louis Botto, Chanticleer quickly took its place as one of the most prolific recording and touring ensembles in the world, an "orchestra of voices" performing thousands of live concerts and selling more than one million recordings.

Rooted in the Renaissance, Chanticleer’s repertoire has expanded to include a wide range of classical, gospel, jazz and popular music, and reflects a deep commitment to the commissioning of new compositions and arrangements. The ensemble has dedicated much of its vast recording catalogue to these commissions, garnering Grammy Awards for its recordings of Sir John Tavener’s Lamentations & Praises and the ambitious collection of commissioned works entitled Colors of Love.

Chanticleer is the recipient of Chorus America’s Dale Warland Commission Award and the Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. The group’s Music Director Emeritus, Joseph H. Jennings, received the Brazeal Wayne Dennard Award for his contribution to the African American choral tradition during his 25-year tenure as both singer and Music Director. Chanticleer – named for the "clear-singing" rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – was named Ensemble of the Year by Musical America in 2008 and inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.

The group’s award-winning education programs were recognized with the 2010 Chorus America Education Outreach Award and have engaged tens of thousands of students since the ensemble began.