In early 1978 Louis Botto brought together a group of male friends for an evening of music making. Sitting around a dining table, they sang through some medieval and Renaissance choral music. A musicology student in the Bay Area at the time, Botto wondered why so little of this vast repertoire was so rarely, if ever, performed. The music was readily available, musically accessible, and originally composed to be sung by men—all of the ingredients needed for a delightful evening of singing. Little did he know that this idea would lead to the development of a group that would share the joy of music with millions of people worldwide.
The men enjoyed themselves so much at that musical get-together that Botto invited the best male singers he knew for further, more formal practice with the goal of sharing more of this “forgotten” music with the public. Botto, well connected with the singing community in the Bay Area, soon formed an ensemble of nine men, including himself.
Then it was time to do what can be one of the most difficult things for a newly formed group: agree on a name. Founding member Charlie Erikson suggested “Chanticleer,” after the “clear singing” rooster in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which he was reading at the time. Chaucer had in turn borrowed the term from the ancient French tale, Renard the Fox. It is a combination of the French chanter, “to sing,” and clair, meaning “clear.”
Following the group’s successful debut before a capacity crowd at San Francisco’s historic Old Mission Dolores in June 1978, the singers agreed to continue rehearsing, setting a goal of performing a new concert approximately every four months. In 1981 they expanded beyond the Bay Area with their first national and international concert tours. Tours during the group’s early years were long and exhausting, including as many as 180 concerts in one season and nine out of 12 months on the road, eight to 10 weeks at a time. Traveling by van, the men sang in every U.S. state, frequently performing a dozen concerts in as many days, often in small towns.
Today Chanticleer performs to sold-out audiences all over the world in an annual touring schedule of 25 weeks. Currently, that concert season lasts from late July until late June and includes 100 to 110 performances. This year the group will sing concerts in the People’s Republic of China for the first time.
In the early years, singing in Chanticleer was just one of its members’ many “part-time gigs” and earned the singers very little money. Varying numbers made up the ensemble until 12 singers eventually became the ideal number. From the beginning, Botto’s goal was for Chanticleer to provide full-time, salaried employment for its singers. By 1991, all 12 members were full-time employees. Currently, Chanticleer provides full-time, salaried positions with regular raises for its members, proportionate to their years of service.
Hiring countertenor Joseph Jennings in 1983 proved to be perhaps the most propitious move Chanticleer ever made. An accomplished pianist, prolific composer and arranger, and skilled singer, Jennings found the ideal creative outlet in Chanticleer. Soon after becoming the group’s music director, Jennings began arranging spirituals, gospel music, and jazz standards for the group, contributing immeasurably to the group’s popularity. (Many of his works are available in Hinshaw Music’s Chanticleer Choral Series, at Yelton Rhodes Music, and at Oxford University Press.)
Members of the group share many of the tasks involved with preparation and rehearsal, but Jennings does all of the concert planning. His repertoire selection has helped create the distinguishing characteristics of the ensemble, namely Chanticleer’s ability to offer a variety of musical timbres and styles while maintaining a continuity of sound.
“Very often programs structure themselves,” Jennings said, when asked about programming. “It may start with an idea, or a theme, or even a specific type of music, and then everything builds around it.” In addition to his already large knowledge of the literature, he “looks at a lot of music.” Jennings usually plans programs and seasons two or three years in advance to accommodate newly commissioned works and allow adequate rehearsal time.
Jennings’ approach to rehearsing is to “try to build a piece so that it has room to grow. The most important thing is that everyone understands the piece. That way, it can have a life of its own. Since we sing unconducted, this is essential. At some point I have to step back and let them have it. My biggest job is to make myself dispensable.”
With 30 recordings to Chanticleer’s credit, it’s difficult to believe that a contract with a major recording label once eluded the group. Chanticleer released its first commercial recording in 1982, and in 1987 (the group’s 10th anniversary) created its own independent label, Chanticleer Records, which issued an impressive 10 discs in just six years. Recordings sold well at concerts but had no national or international distribution. Signing an exclusive contract with Teldec Classics International in 1994 remedied that, making worldwide recognition possible.
Awards for Chanticleer’s recordings include a Grammy nomination in 1997, a Grammy award in 2000 for Best Small Ensemble Performance, and two Grammy awards in 2004 for Best Small Ensemble Performance and Best Classical Contemporary Composition.
Many view Chanticleer as an “a cappella group,” but the group’s repertoire is not limited to a cappella works. Chanticleer has taken on adventurous and ambitious projects, including programs of unknown works by 18th century Mexican composers performed with period instruments; Monteverdi’s Vespers with orchestra; a fully-staged production of Benjamin Britten’s opera, Curlew River; and a dramatic work by Sir John Tavener, Lamentations and Praises. Chanticleer has also collaborated with many artists, including Frederica von Stade and George Scheer. In recognition of its commitment to creative programming and new works, the ensemble received the inaugural Dale Warland Singers Commission Award in 2008 and the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming that same year.
Since 1983, Chanticleer has commissioned more than 70 composers to write new works for the group. Other efforts to encourage a new generation of composers include a three-year composer in residence program, established in 1993, a composer symposium in 2001, and a biennial Student Composer Competition. Hinshaw Music published the winning works as part of the Chanticleer Choral Series. The next Student Composer Competition is this year. (See www.chanticleer.org/music_write.cfm.)
Fostering the development of young composers is just one of Chanticleer’s educational outreach programs. Jennings’ enthusiasm for teaching young singers led to the development of “Singing in the Schools” residencies in 1986. Nurtured by individual contributions and foundation and corporate financial support, this program allows Jennings and special guest artists to visit schools in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and work with choral students in grades five through 12.
Chanticleer’s educational outreach programs have grown to reach singers of all ages and levels of musical ability. The group provides nationwide college and university residency workshops as part of its touring schedule. Chanticleer also began the annual Chanticleer Youth Choral Festival in 2000, a non-competitive, daylong series of workshops and exchanges with the ensemble culminating in a full-scale evening performance.
In 2005, in collaboration with Robert Worth, director of choral music at Sonoma State University, the group established the annual “Chanticleer in Sonoma” summer workshop, offering 64 experienced adult choral singers an intensive five-day program of coaching, classes, and rehearsals.
Chanticleer produces its distinctive sound by singing all the parts of a “mixed” choir (SATB) but with male voices. It’s the vocal equivalent of a recorder consort or a string quartet: the same timbre from low to high with the main difference between instruments being their size and range. This allows for an unparalleled blend of voices, not just between singers of the same part, but among all voice parts.
What is it like to sing with this “orchestra of voices”?
I asked current and former members to talk about their experiences in the group. Former member and countertenor Jay White remarked that the unmatched high quality of music making is what he truly misses about singing with the group.
“Of course, there is the great joy of making a living doing what you love,” said tenor and recently named music director Matthew Oltman. “But in musical terms, the wide variety of repertoire that Chanticleer performs is ever-challenging, requires a great amount of vocal flexibility, and always tries to include the audience in the execution, which makes each and every concert a new and satisfying experience.”
How should a young singer best prepare for a Chanticleer audition? Former member and countertenor Steven Rickards had only one thing to say: “Be able to sight-read!” A beautiful voice, musicality, musicianship, and technical flexibility are all essential, but sight-reading ability often determines whether a singer gets the job.
The first step in the application process, due each November, is to submit a preliminary application, résumé and recording. The artistic advisor and the music director review the applications and invite approximately 12 finalists to a weekend-long live audition in San Francisco in February. The weekend’s activities include individual sight-reading and vocal testing, as well as “plugging” applicants into the group in different combinations to test blend, stamina, innate musicality, language skills, interpretation, etc. Each finalist also presents a solo recital for the other applicants, members of Chanticleer, Chanticleer’s staff and board, and invited guests. Following the auditions everyone usually enjoys some well-deserved social time.
Singers accepted into the group are often surprised by the toll that busy rehearsal and performing schedules can take on their voices. When in San Francisco, the group rehearses four hours a day, five days a week.
“We go through college singing virtually every day,” said White, “but not at that level and certainly not for concentrated periods of time.”
“It takes quite a bit of vocal stamina to sing in Chanticleer,” agrees Oltman, “what with singing about 110 concerts a year. Developing that stamina can be difficult, and even after 10 years (in my case) it can still take a while to get a piece of music ‘in your throat.’
“The intensity of energy required to get through a two-hour long concert can also be challenging—not just the energy required to sing, but also to emote, move, interpret, enunciate, and generally bridge the gap between stage and audience so that we can all have one unique shared experience.”
Jennings said that changes in the group’s membership create the excitement and challenge of training the new group how to “be” Chanticleer.
“They must learn how to work together and more importantly how to trust each other,” he said. “They must realize they are no longer individual singers but all one voice. We work on building group technique and they get to know each other’s voices. They must learn how to interrelate.”
Do singers in Chanticleer feel they need to alter their vocal production for various styles and to blend?
“Blend is always an issue, but maintaining an individual sound is also desired,” said Oltman. “We try to strike a balance between being 12 soloists and 12 indistinguishable voices.”
The biggest surprise for Oltman when he began singing in the group was the amount of rehearsal time devoted simply to talking about the music.
“We talk a lot,” he said. “It is necessary, as we don’t use a conductor and each of us 12 singers must come to a consensus as to the interpretation of a piece of music so that we perform it with a certain amount of single-mindedness.”
Jennings described the typical rehearsal structure as singing, after talking. “There are many aspects that must be addressed, depending upon the piece,” he said. “These aspects include style, diction, and what key works best for the group. For more difficult pieces, the difficult aspects may be notes and rhythms.
“Probably the thing that we spend the most time on, especially when we first hand out a piece,” continued Jennings, “is the voicing. It does not always work out that it is clear-cut. Even when we do 12-part music, there are times, especially when things are doubled, that we have to address the issue of balance.”
The men don’t do group warmups to work on blend. “All of our coalescing occurs in the course of working on music and singing,” said Jennings.
The group usually sings through a new piece of music first, followed by the sections looking at their parts to decide who will sing what in any divisi sections. Jennings works to pace rehearsals so that the singers have adequate downtime and rest periods. The group does not adhere to a typical routine of rehearsing for an hour and taking a break. The daily four-hour rehearsals include a lunch break about halfway through.
“Of course, we are not singing for two hours straight,” said Jennings. “There has to be time to stop and discuss, and digress, and joke around, and play.” His approach to phrasing and dynamics is organic. “They must all relate to the music and the text and the composer’s intentions. I try to help [the group] discover the reason for a particular dynamic, or tempo, or articulation as it serves the music and the text.”
Is it possible to continue to pursue a solo career while singing with the ensemble? Oltman said that the group sings so much “the last thing you want to do with your time off is sing some more.” The intense schedule precludes doing much additional solo work. Members may get opportunities they can accept from time to time, but this is rare.
Some members are able to continue taking voice lessons while in San Francisco, even with the group’s schedule demands, “although it is difficult to find a teacher who understands the vast array of vocal techniques needed to sing the wide variety of music our concerts demand,” said Oltman. “Having a solid basic technique is essential (breath control, relaxation, alignment, etc.), but too much concentration on perfecting one ‘color’ can actually be detrimental in our line of work.”
Members say the amount of singing they do for their “day job” means they don’t have time, energy, or interest in maintaining practice time for their own solo technique. “Trust me,” Oltman said, “sometimes we are singing so much that the thought of even humming in the shower can make your stomach turn. This is especially true during the Christmas season, when we even cut down our warmup rehearsals to save as much voice and energy for the concert and not waste it in rehearsal.”
“When you do 100 concerts a year,” agrees White, “you cherish the times you are not singing.”
Members do get some much needed downtime, with days off similar to those of any corporate worker: weekends (except when on tour), major holidays, and 10 days of paid vacation. To make up for the weekends lost on tour, the singers make up for vacation time at some other time, typically after the “Christmas Juggernaut” (which lasts about two weeks) and during another three busy weeks or so during the summer.
Maintaining such a demanding schedule makes it challenging to develop new friendships or nurture existing relationships. Friends and family must accept that the singers are out-of-town for two weeks every month. Chanticleer has always included members who are either married or in long-term relationships. Currently none of the members has children, although the group has included fathers in the past. Several of these singing dads discovered that their work with the group took too much of a toll on their relationships with their children and they left the group.
Obviously, it takes a singer with robust health to maintain the demands of “Chanticleering.” How do members stay in good health? “Sleep, sleep, sleep,” replied all of the singers I interviewed.
What happens when someone is ill and cannot sing? “There is no ‘sick’ in Chanticleer,” said Oltman. “Seriously—you sing anyway.
“Did you hear that, all you students out there taking a ‘vocal rest’ day?” he continued. “Get off your butts and learn to sing over your illness! It is called technique. And when the times come that you need to sing in order to eat, you’ll be glad you learned to sing with a cold, the flu, measles, mumps, what-have-you.”
Infrequently a case of total laryngitis may cause a singer to have to sit out a performance. If a singer can stand up, however, he is on stage, singing whatever he can. On those rare occasions when a member is absent the other singers do their best to cover his part, or sometimes, if they can’t cover that part, cut pieces.
How much time should the singers expect to spend working on music outside of rehearsals, given that members of the group are expected to be able to read Renaissance music, folk song arrangements, and choral standards nearly perfectly from the get-go? This varies from singer to singer, depending upon musical skills. A new member has a tremendous amount of music to learn, so individual work outside rehearsals is necessary. Contemporary pieces might also require extra practice, but, Oltman explained, difficult contemporary works are often best learned as a group.
“In general, the more difficult the music (new commissions, large-scale pieces, pieces in strange and wondrous languages), the more time we spend learning the music together,” he said. “Sometimes the music is so difficult or your part is so reliant on other parts that practicing alone isn’t really all that productive.”
Uniform understanding and execution of proper pronunciation contribute immeasurably to the group’s characteristic sound, so the singers strive to be as thorough as possible when learning text. Group members handle much of the duties of diction coaching. Currently, Eric Alatorre (of Mexican descent and married to a German) coaches German and Spanish. Todd Wedge (who has had extensive Italian diction study) coaches Italian, and Oltman (for whom French diction is a specialty) coaches French.
If a piece in an unusual language or dialect is short or has few words, the group may pool its knowledge and use online resources to work out pronunciation. Usually they bring in a native speaker to coach the ensemble. In recent years, the men have received coaching in Hungarian, Chinese, Armenian, Russian, Irish Gaelic, and more.
The “Chanticleer sound,” though always identifiable, has evolved through the years with changes in personnel, playing on the strengths of members during their time in the group. “New members have . . . created their own unique sounds and that’s a wonderful thing,” said White.
In addition to that distinctive sound, the group maintains the tradition of a “Chanticleer look,” which includes white tie and tails for concerts. Staff members—in consultation with the group’s marketing directors, agent, and the singers—make decisions about attire for other performances and publicity but always try to stay with this “look.”
After so many years of living this all-consuming lifestyle, some men need time to “regroup” after leaving the ensemble. They may choose to separate themselves from the organization for a time while they are making the transition back to “normal life.” Occasional reunions, most recently in 2007 for the 30th anniversary, allow former and current members to meet and network.
All members, present and past, have had the great fortune of making music at a very high level.
“Periodically I remind us of why we do what we do,” said Jennings. “It is not for money or fame. We have been called to serve art and its creator and that is a high calling. We have the opportunity to touch many lives in ways that we cannot fathom.”
Indeed, through sharing their gifts, the singers in Chanticleer are an inspiration to listeners the world over. Chanticleer is an American institution that shall, as White says, “live as long as there are men to sing and an audience to listen.”
