Program - Krannert Center for the Performing Arts

From The Lotus Lovers
Music by Stephen Paulus
Text by Tzu Yeh
A Rich Brocade
Bright moonlight fills the trees, and like a rich
brocade, the flowers bloom.
How can I not think of you, alone, lonely?
Late Spring
The willows bend, bend to the seabreeze—
How suddenly springtime flies!
Magpies welcome the summer, but cicadas cry
from the trees.
How suddenly springtime flies!
All Night
All the sleepless night
In the moon’s white light,
Alone,
She listens.
Does his voice call out?
She replies to an empty room.
All the sleepless night,
Alone.
Illusions
The night is endless,
Under the bright moonlight,
And the sleep I long for never, never comes.
Suddenly I hear—I think—your voice, and
I call for you,
My heart racing into my throat.
Only the echo
Answers,
Only the echo to mock me in the night.
And the sleep I long for never, never comes.
Called “the world’s reigning male chorus” by New
Yorker magazine and named Ensemble of the Year by
Musical America in 2008, Chanticleer will perform
more than 100 concerts in 2011-2012, the Grammy
Award-winning ensemble’s 34th season. Praised by
the San Francisco Chronicle for its “tonal luxuriance
and crisply etched clarity,” Chanticleer will tour to 21
of the United States, appearing in a wide variety of
venues including the Walt Disney Concert Hall and
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. A summer
trip to Europe includes prestigious festivals such as
the Edinburgh International Festival, Festival de La
Chaise-Dieu, Musikfest Bremen, the Schleswig-
Holstein Music Festival, and the Rheingau Music
Festival in August. On a 10-country tour in early
2012, the ensemble returned to Europe’s most
renowned concert halls, including the Musikverein
(Vienna), Béla Bartók National Concert Hall
(Budapest), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), and
Philharmonic Hall (Vilnius). Exciting events this season
include Chanticleer’s performance on the soundtrack
of the 10th anniversary release by Microsoft of its
legendary video game Halo, the ensemble’s first live
film score performance, and a return visit to six
California missions with more newly discovered music
of the period.
Based in San Francisco, Chanticleer is known around
the world as “an orchestra of voices” for the
seamless blend of its 12 male voices ranging from
countertenor to bass and its original interpretations
of vocal literature—from Renaissance to jazz and
from gospel to venturesome new music.
Chanticleer’s 30-concert 2011-2012 Bay Area season
opened in September with Love Story—songs
exploring humanity’s most profound and fascinating
emotion—including a new composition by Stephen
Paulus and a new Vince Peterson arrangement of
Somebody to Love by Freddie Mercury. Chanticleer’s
busy Christmas season included the release of Our
CHANTICLEER
Favorite Carols on CD and download, performances
of its beloved A Chanticleer Christmas around the
country and the Bay Area, and the program’s
broadcast on more than 225 National Public Radio
stations. The season continued with What Do You
Think I Fought For, a multimedia program of music
about conflict, including Brent Michael David’s score
for D. W. Griffith’s silent film Leatherstocking. The
season-ending tour includes six of California’s
beautiful and beloved missions.
Chanticleer’s recordings are distributed by
Chanticleer, Rhino Records, and iTunes, among other
outlets, and are available on Chanticleer’s web site,
www.chanticleer.org. New this season is Our Favorite
Carols, popular Christmas music from live
performances as broadcast on American Public
Media. Let It Snow, a collection of Christmas music
released in 2007, was on the Billboard charts for 12
weeks. Colors of Love won the Grammy Award in
2000 for Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or
without conductor) and the Contemporary A
Cappella Recording Award for Best Classical Album.
The world-premiere recording of Sir John Tavener’s
Lamentations and Praises was released in January
2002 to critical acclaim and garnered Grammy
Awards for Classical Best Small Ensemble
Performance (with or without conductor) and for Best
Classical Contemporary Composition. A selection
from this CD is featured in Terrence Malik’s The Tree
of Life. The Chanticleer Live in Concert series now
includes six releases of live recordings.
With the help of individual contributions and
foundation and corporate support, the ensemble
involves more than 5,000 young people annually in its
extensive education program. The 2010-2011 season
saw the creation of the Louis A. Botto Choir, an afterschool
honors program for high school and college
students, which was added to the ongoing program
of in-school clinics and workshops; Chanticleer Youth
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