The dozen voices of Chanticleer defy gravity at every turn — in a Catholic liturgy from Mexico, in a Russian folk tale, in an American jazz standard.
Generating a distinctive, heavenly sound evoking the historic underpinnings of sacred music has never been a problem for the 20-year-old San Francisco-based ensemble, which will perform a cappella Friday in Elgin Community College’s Visual and Performing Arts Center.
“We will have already been in the neighborhood (with a recent University of Chicago show), but there are new selections” for their Elgin shows, according to Frank Albinder, the group’s associate conductor and a Chanticleer baritone.
Those songs include 16th Century works by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina as well as contemporary works by Allen Shearer and Brent Michael Davids. A second set will include an international grab bag of folk songs that might include a Stephen Foster tune or an Asian piece by Chen Yi, the group’s former resident composer.
“We really do place a lot of emphasis on two areas — early and Renaissance music and modern music,” Albinder says. “We like to do unusual and interesting things.”
From its beginnings as a Renaissance-style vocal consort, Chanticleer has bloomed in scope and acclaim. The only full-time, independent classical singing group in the U.S., Chanticleer has its share of feathers in its cap, appropriate enough for a choir named after the high-strutting rooster in Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.”
The choir’s new recording, “Matins for the Virgin of Guadalupe, 1764,” focuses on the group’s roots in religious music.
“It really started out as a group for friends who were trying to re-create the kind of choir that might have sung in a church (hundreds of years ago),” Albinder says.
Albinder notes that the chant music craze is hardly the cause of the group’s popularity.
“It’s funny because we’ve been singing chant for years,” he says. “When the Spanish monk CD (`Chant’) came out in the U.S., it sold a bazillion recordings. And ours, of course, came out much later. One critic put it that we were jumping on the chant-sploitation bandwagon. I wrote a letter explaining that this was recorded even before the Spanish monks’ record. But it is great people know about this repertoire.
“We’re versatile and have been able to do all sorts of music,” Albinder says. “Our growth has been steady for 20 years.”
And the real key to Chanticleer’s longevity?
“We ain’t monks — that’s for sure.”
———-
Chanticleer performs at 8 p.m. April 3 on Stage 1 of the Elgin Community College Visual and Performing Arts Center, 1700 Spartan Dr., Elgin. Tickets are $23 for adults, $22 for students and seniors. Call 847-622-0300.
