Chanticleer's Labor Day Weekend

We're busy on several fronts this Labor Day Weekend. Lab Choir 2 convened for its second day which included sectionals on Kirke Mechem's "Island in Space" (which is on Chanticleer's touring program this year,) rhythm exercises invented by Ben on the spot, reading of a Gregorian Chant under the direction of Dominic (Ben's assistant and a singer in LC2, who also knows about Chant) further work on Ave Regina Coelorum by Sumaya which was started yesterday....and so on.
More tomorrow and Monday - we have to hand it to those young singers - they're working hard!!!

We were on the other side of the Bay at Fantasy Studio in Berkeley, continuing our work on Steven Sametz' pieces which required a fair amount of experimentation with our standing positions in relation to the mics. Tonight we'll do Erika Lloyd's "Cells Planets" and that's it for the studio for a while.

On our dinner break we took a look at our new web-site, which will be going up very soon and which will make it REALLY easy for you to download music - like these new tracks we're making right now!!

September: LAB Choir 2 starts today!

Today was the first session this season of Chanticleer's Louis A. Botto (LAB) Choir, led by our Education Director Ben Johns. We started this idea last year, forming the 14 member LAB CHOIR 1 to be the instrument for the sessions we offered the choir directors at our National Youth Choral Festival. For LAB CHOIR 2, Ben recruited 22 student singers from as far away as Santa Rosa and Davis, as well as San Francisco and the East Bay. It's something we've thought about for a long time; it's seems a natural for us to expand upon our education offerings with an after-school program for advanced singers. There will be three 10 week sessions during the school year, each with up to 25 singers participating. They will rehearse every weekend and perform at schools, community centers -wherever they decide to. They will be able to attend a Chanticleer rehearsal, have input from the ensemble, and see Chanticleer in concert. LAB CHOIR 2 will make its debut at our Youth Choral Festival on October 22. We thank all the parents who came along for their support, and we thank the singers for singing up for this adventure with Chanticleer.

Today's session started with a sing through of "Sure on this shining night" - as Ben said -"just to see what we sound like." The four hour session included a greeting from Chanticleer Board Chair Kathy Henschel, warm-ups, snacks, discussing the schedule, getting acquainted, and a lot of serious singing. They'll meet again Saturday and Sunday and Monday for 6 hours each day. That's the whole Labor Day weekend - a very impressive commitment! We can't wait to hear them.

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.

August: engineering in the Magellanic Cloud

Today we're having a break from recording. Meanwhile however in the studio Producer Don Fraser, engineer Chris Manning, and Matt are mastering what we did over the last few days - Mason Bates' "Observer in the Magellanic Cloud" and Jan Sandstrom's "And the Word became flesh."

Here's a 'picture' of Mason's piece on Chris' monitor...

And here's a picture of the real Magellanic Cloud, imagined by Mason to house satellites capable of picking up ancient sounds. It's a great piece which we will sing oh, 50 or so times, in the course of this season. You should come hear it live, but if not, you can hear it on recording (downloadable from our site pretty soon.)

August: Here we are in the Magellanic Cloud

Back in the studio to record some more. It's taking a long time to get Mason Bates" "Observer in the Magellanic Cloud" down. It's difficult, but we think you'll think it was worth it! Very interesting piece on a Maori chant for which we got help with our pronunciation - kindly provided by Robert Wiremu over the phone from Auckland, New Zealand. In addition to being a native speaker of Maori, he knows the IPA and how singers go about achieving 'diction.' We thank him a lot, and hope the result will be worthy of his efforts!
After the Bates piece, about satellites in the Magellanic Cloud picking up the chant of ancient Maoris, we moved on to Jan Sandstrom's "And the word became flesh" which you will hear at Christmas-time. Chanticleer commissioned both of these pieces, the latter with the help of the Osher Pro Suecia Fund.
We're enjoying Fantasy Studios and the patience and good humor of producer Don Fraser.