September: back in the dark with Sametz and Sandstrom

Our two day break in the recording schedule coincided with a heat wave in San Francisco - that was excellent! We haven't worn shorts in San Francisco all summer until now. We are thinking of our East Coast friends who are as we write in the path of Hurricane Earl. Hope it goes OK!!! While you're waiting for Earl we're back at Fantasy Studio in Berkeley to continue on with the Sandstrom piece, as well as starting on Steven Sametz' two new songs to texts by Walt Whitman. Steven's beautiful pieces "I have had Singing" and "In time of.." have been a big part of Chanticleer's life forever; we looking forward to adding these new ones. Because of the amazing Convolution system, we are doing Steven's pieces in the acoustic of the Chorus Room of the Netherlands Radio - a legendary recording space. You can choose from 40-50 actual acoustics, making it possible to record all styles of music in the same studio here at Fantasy.

Casey, like Michael Axtell, is recording with Chanticleer before ever singing a concert with Chanticleer. This often happens as August is sometimes a good time in the schedule to record, even though new singers have just joined us. Casey says it's really instructive to be able to hear back what we've done and his part in it. We all got to hear the results of our pretty arduous sessions on Mason Bates' "Observer in the Magellanic Cloud" - very very cool!

One more day tomorrow to do Vince Peterson's arrangement of Erica Lloyd's "Cells Planets" (Chanticleer meets indie pop) then we'll be back to rehearsal for our first concerts of the season here in the Bay Area.
Back at our place in San Francisco, the LAB Choir will have its first rehearsal tonight.