Explore the Festival
Chanticleer
The GRAMMY® Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer is known around the world as “an orchestra of voices” for its wide-ranging repertoire and dazzling virtuosity. 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, selling over one million recordings and performing thousands of live concerts to audiences around the world.
*Programming and artists subject to change, please refer to the participating organization’s calendar listing for the most up-to-date program.
Events
Nature's Voice
Continuing its 45-year tradition of commissioning new choral works, the Grammy-award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer presents a concert of new compositions and new arrangements written specifically for the ensemble. The concert features new pieces by Chanticleer's composer-in-residence Ayanna Woods, as well as a choral arrangement of a new song cycle by Majel Connery.
Piece(s)/Composer(s)
THE RIVERS ARE OUR BROTHERS, 2023
Majel CONNERY
CLOSE[R], NOW, 2021
Ayanna WOODS
Program Notes
A river gurgles. Wind rushes. Branches creak. Snowflakes faintly fall. Every piece of the world has a sound. But if you listen really closely, you might also find that each of these pieces has a song. In Nature’s Voice, Chanticleer sings the songs of the natural world and gives a voice to the otherwise voiceless rocks and trees and rivers that share our planet with us. The program centers around a new arrangement of Majel Connery’s song cycle The Rivers are our Brothers. First performed in the Sierra Valley, Majel’s music and text are inexorably linked with the Sierra Nevada mountains. Each movement represents a different part of the Sierra’s natural beauty, from its peaks to its forests, rocks, rivers, and snow banks. "The goal,” she says, is to “allow these vibrant things to speak on their own behalf." Majel describes herself as a “vocalist, composer and roving musicologist making electro-art-dream-pop with repressed classical influences.” She tours frequently with her art-rock band Sky Creature and is the host and producer of A Music of Their Own – a podcast exploring female experiences in the music industry (CapRadio/NPR).
Paired with Majel’s song cycle are new works by Chanticleer’s composer-in-residence, Ayanna Woods. Ayanna first started working with Chanticleer during the pandemic, when she wrote “close[r], now.” The source material for that piece is an L.A. Times editorial from March 2020 detailing the reasons why theaters and performing arts venues should “close, now.” Woods restructured and resampled the article to create a new text that highlights the changes we had to make to connect to one another during the pandemic. Through isolation and distance, we were forced to “hone the dexterity of love” and to be creative with how we care for each other. Woods closes the piece with an imperative for the world: “come back to life.” Ayanna is a Grammy-nominated performer, composer and bandleader from Chicago. Her music explores the spaces between acoustic and electronic, traditional and esoteric, wildly improvisational and mathematically rigorous.
Media
About Chanticleer
A river gurgles. Wind rushes. Branches creak. Snowflakes faintly fall. Every piece of the world has a sound. But if you listen really closely, you might also find that each of these pieces has a song. In Nature’s Voice, Chanticleer sings the songs of the natural world and gives a voice to the otherwise voiceless rocks and trees and rivers that share our planet with us. The program centers around a new arrangement of Majel Connery’s song cycle The Rivers are our Brothers. First performed in the Sierra Valley, Majel’s music and text are inexorably linked with the Sierra Nevada mountains. Each movement represents a different part of the Sierra’s natural beauty, from its peaks to its forests, rocks, rivers, and snow banks. "The goal,” she says, is to “allow these vibrant things to speak on their own behalf." Majel describes herself as a “vocalist, composer and roving musicologist making electro-art-dream-pop with repressed classical influences.” She tours frequently with her art-rock band Sky Creature and is the host and producer of A Music of Their Own – a podcast exploring female experiences in the music industry (CapRadio/NPR).
Paired with Majel’s song cycle are new works by Chanticleer’s composer-in-residence, Ayanna Woods. Ayanna first started working with Chanticleer during the pandemic, when she wrote “close[r], now.” The source material for that piece is an L.A. Times editorial from March 2020 detailing the reasons why theaters and performing arts venues should “close, now.” Woods restructured and resampled the article to create a new text that highlights the changes we had to make to connect to one another during the pandemic. Through isolation and distance, we were forced to “hone the dexterity of love” and to be creative with how we care for each other. Woods closes the piece with an imperative for the world: “come back to life.” Ayanna is a Grammy-nominated performer, composer and bandleader from Chicago. Her music explores the spaces between acoustic and electronic, traditional and esoteric, wildly improvisational and mathematically rigorous.