Music of a Silent World: Chanticleer in an eclectic recital exploring the natural world

Chanticleer

Earlier this Summer, I had the delight of being part of a small audience at the Voces8 centre when the American male-voice ensemble, Chanticleer, music director Tim Keeler, recorded a concert for Live from London, Summer 2024. The whole series is now available from the Live from London website.

Chanticleer’s recital is titled Music of a Silent World and is designed to explore the beauty and complexity of the natural world, centring on a song cycle by song-writer and composer Majel Connery, The Rivers are our Brothers written especially for Chanticleer and heard in a new arrangement by Connery and Doug Balliett. The ensemble sings Connery’s three songs surrounded by linking items to create an intriguing recital evoking the natural world in popular-style music.

The programme running from Joni Mitchell and Kurt Weill to Hoagy Carmichael and Max Reger, has the ensemble’s trademark eclecticism, mixed in with superb technique, and admirably smooth tone, along with a wide variety of musical styles when it comes to the arrangements. Here we move flexibly from close harmony to doo-wop to pop/jazz to gospel. The ensemble is admirably mixed, but you still start to worry a little about cultural appropriation when hearing them in full-throated emulation of gospel performance style.

They begin with a set about stars, Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars and Hogy Carmichael’s Stardust, both given close-harmony style makeovers. Then a set about trees, with I am a tree from Connery’s cycle, I miss you like I miss the trees by the ensemble’s composer in residence, Ayanna Woods, Abschied from Max Reger’s Op. 83 songs which were written for male-voice ensemble, and Ann Ronell’s 1932 standard, Willow weep for me. It is a set that is not without stylistic lurches, which the singers all take in their stride, and I felt the Reger might have fitted better sung in English. Connery’s style is somewhat unquantifiable, her music here is akin to a lyrical ballad but then it develops somewhat and the arrangement clearly has contemporary classical links. Ayanna Woods’ rather touching song is serious with popular hints, then after the rich tone and po-faces of the Reger we emerge into doo-wop with Ann Ronell’s song.

The next set moves to the air, with I am the air from Connery’s cycle, then two Reger songs, Hochzommernacht and Eine gantz neu Schelmweys, one evoking the Summer breeze and the other something more roguish. Clouds come next with Connery’s I am a cloud, given in a highly virtuoso arrangement, followed by an elaborate arrangement of Joni Mitchell’s Both sides now which threatens to leave the song too far behind for my taste. The recital ends with an elaborate arrangement of the traditional song, Shenandoah and finally a virtuoso accound of JW Alexander and Jesse Whitaker’s Straight Street.

The line up consists of countertenors (high and low), tenor and baritone/bass but all the singers seem to have great flexibility with the countenors going into chest register and tenors going high so that in his solo tenor Vineel Garisa Mahal floats a fine high C.

The sheer virtuoso skill and engagement of the singers is undeniable and all the soloists are of the highest order. The group sings without a conductor and clearly they are engaged with the material. I am not sure that the presentation, with them in white tie, really works and I longed for something a bit more casual. In some songs there is a little movement, and but they feel a bit constrained.

This was the first time I had heard Chanticleer live and was extremely impressed. 

Music of a Silent World
Tavian Cox, Cortez Mitchell, Gerrod Pagenkopf. Bradley Sharpe, Logan Shields, Adam Brett Ward – countertenor
Vineel Garisa Mahal, Matthew Mazzola, Andrew Van Allsburg – tenor
Andy Berry, Jared Graveley, Matthew Knickman – baritone and bass
Tim Keeler – Music Director

Live from London: Summer 2024 is available until 15 September and also features recitals from Voces8, Apollo5,  Mars Smith, Evolution, Ex Cathedra (in Monteverdi’s Vespers), Lyrya, Ringmasters, soprano Paula Sides, pianist Sergey Rybin, and pianist Fiachra Garvey