St. Charles Singers Sets 2023-2024 Season Featuring World Premieres and Collaborations

The St. Charles Singers has announced its 2023-2024 season featuring world premieres of newly commissioned works from Andrew Wainwright and John Rutter, a guest appearance by the Millar Brass Ensemble, and joint performances with six high school choirs.

"It's a privilege and a blessing to begin our 40th season of music making," Hunt says. "Our four concert programs reflect our past, present, and future.

"The repertoire embraces a wide array of beautiful, transcendent, and spiritually moving music. Some of it is challenging to perform, all of it is irresistible to listen to."

Opening the St. Charles Singers' new season, the October program "Bach Is Back!" offers two J. S. Bach motets, neither of which the St. Charles Singers has performed before, along with polyphonic pieces from the English Renaissance to the present. Polyphony is a musical style where multiple melodies are sung at the same time.

"Candlelight Carols" in December brings a first-time collaboration with the Millar Brass Ensemble and the premiere of Wainwright's new work for choir and brass.

"Brass brings a sparkling, celebratory sound to the Christmas season," Hunt says. It will be the choir's first holiday concert with brass players.

A new community-outreach initiative, February's "Choral Connections" concerts will showcase the St. Charles Singers and choruses from six local high schools whose choral directors also sing with the St. Charles Singers. At each concert, Hunt's choir and three different high school ensembles will perform on their own and together.

"The goal is to instill, nurture, and celebrate a lifelong love of the choral arts," Hunt says.

"Past as Prologue," April's season-finale program, toasts the choir's long-standing friendship with renowned English composer and choirmaster John Rutter. The choral legend has guest conducted the St. Charles Singers several times over the years. The concert will feature the world premiere of a new piece Rutter has written for the St. Charles Singers' 40th anniversary and works the choir first performed under Rutter's direction.

"Working with John Rutter has been a joy and an inspiration for all of us," Hunt says.

'Welcome Bach!' brings motets and more October 14 and 15

A profusion of polyphonic music will be heard in "Welcome Bach!," which opens the St. Charles Singers' 2023-2024 season.

The choir will give its first performances of J. S. Bach's sacred motets "Fürchte dich nicht" (Do not fear), BWV 228, and "Komm, Jesu, komm" (Come, Jesus, come), BWV 229.

Performing with the choir will be a period-instrument continuo - a Baroque rhythm section - of Craig Trompeter, Baroque cello; Jerry Fuller, Baroque double bass, and Stephen Uhl, organ.

The program offers Ivo Antognini's festive motet "Jubilate Deo" (Shout to God); William Byrd's English Renaissance anthem "Sing Joyfully"; Hugo Distler's neo-Baroque "Ich wollt, dass ich daheime wär" (I wish that I were home), Op. 12, No. 5; and L. L. Fleming's arrangement of the traditional spiritual "Give Me Jesus," with duets between tenors and basses and sopranos and altos.

Also: Algirdas Martinaitis's poignant, meditative "Alleluia"; Charles Villiers Stanford's lyrical "Beati quorum via" (Blessed are those whose way is blameless) from "Three Latin Motets," Op. 38; John Tavener's "The Lord's Prayer," a work of calm, inner serenity; and Judith Weir's "I Love All Beauteous Things," written for Queen Elizabeth's 90th birthday.

Concerts are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 14; and 3 p.m. Sunday, October 15, at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church, 307 Cedar Avenue, St. Charles, Illinois.

'Candlelight Carols' to captivate with works for choir and brass December 1-3

The St. Charles Singers has enlisted the Millar Brass Ensemble as guest artists at its 2023 Candlelight Carols concerts.

"These virtuosic brass players, led by the estimable Stephen Squires, will add an exhilarating dimension, an extra dash of seasonal magic, to our most popular concerts of the year," Hunt says.

About half the program will comprise music for choir and brass, the rest for choir alone, Hunt says.

A highlight will be the world premiere of Wainwright's choir and brass arrangement of the early Canadian Christmas hymn "Huron Carol," written for the St. Charles Singers.

A British-born composer, arranger, and performer of brass band music, Wainwright has won top prizes for his compositions in multiple international competitions. In 2017, the New York Philharmonic Brass commissioned him to write two pieces for its annual Holiday Brass concert. His music was featured for three consecutive years in the concert series.

Other works to be heard for the first time in a St. Charles Singers program are Australian choral luminary Stephen Leek's "Southern Cross" from the Oxford University Press collection "World Carols for Choirs," June Nixon's rollicking arrangement of the French carol tune "People Look East," a movement from Daniel Pinkham's jubilant, Baroque-inspired "Christmas Cantata (Sinfonia Sacra)," and Rutter's arrangement of the Appalachian carol "I wonder as I wander."

Also on the program are Jonathan Dove's "The Three Kings," Paul Halley's jazzy arrangement of the Christmas spiritual "Go Tell It on the Mountain," Herbert Howells' "A Spotless Rose," Reginald Jacques' "Good King Wenceslas," Mykola Leontovych's "Carol of the Bells," based on a Ukrainian folk chant, Samuel Scheidt's "A child is born," Arthur Warrell's "We wish you a merry Christmas," and David Willcocks' versions of "O Come All Ye Faithful," "Jingle Bells," and "Silent Night."

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday, December 1, at St. Michael Catholic Church, 310 S. Wheaton Ave., Wheaton, Illinois; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, December 2, and 3 p.m. Sunday, December 3, at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church, St. Charles.

'Choral Connections' forges links with six area high school choirs February 23-24

A new initiative, the St. Charles Singers' "Choral Connections" concerts February 23 and 24 comprise two different programs. St. Charles Singers will perform a set of songs, as will choruses from three suburban Chicago high schools. After each group takes its turn, they will sing together in the finale.

Program specifics have yet to be announced.

The first concert includes the St. Charles Singers and choruses from Kaneland High School, Maple Park, Illinois, directed by Bryan Kunstman; Glenbard North High School, Carol Stream, directed by Laura Johnson; and Geneva High School, Geneva, directed by Jessica Heinrich.

Kunstman is a tenor with the St. Charles Singers, Johnson and Heinrich are sopranos in the choir.

The next day's roster includes the St. Charles Singers and choruses from Woodstock High School, Woodstock, directed by Brian Jozwiak; St. Charles East High School, St. Charles, directed by Monica Bertrand; and Sycamore High School, Sycamore, directed by Drayton Eggleston.

Jozwiak and Eggleston are members of the St. Charles Singers' bass section.

Bertrand, who sings alto in the choir, received the St. Charles Singers' 2008 W. Alan Berg Memorial Scholarship while a student and chorus member at St. Charles East High School.

"Choral Connections" will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday, February 23, 2024, and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, February 24, at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church, St. Charles.

'Past as Prologue' concerts April 20-21 herald 40th anniversary

"Past as Prologue,' the St. Charles Singers' season-finale program and the start of its 40th anniversary celebration, looks forward and back through the lens of its enduring relationship with England's Rutter, prolific and internationally admired choral composer and founder of the Cambridge Singers.

Rutter is writing a new work for the St. Charles Singers, his second for choir. It will receive its world premiere at the concerts.

The program includes works that the choir first sang under Rutter as guest conductor: Francis Poulenc's "Chansons françaises" and Benjamin Britten's "Five Flower Songs," Op. 47.

Rutter encouraged British jazz pianist and composer George Shearing to write for the St. Charles Singers. The result was Shearing's "Songs and Sonnets," also on the April program.

The choir will perform English folk songs from the Oxford Press anthologies that Rutter edited.

Audiences will also hear music by Ēriks Ešenvalds, Charles Forsberg, Morten Lauridsen, Leevi Madetoja, Pärt Uusberg, and Eric Whitacre.

Concerts are at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 20, 2024, at St. Michael Catholic Church, Wheaton; and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 21, 2024, 3 p.m. at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church, St. Charles.

Tickets and information

Single-admission tickets to the St. Charles Singers' October, December, and April concerts are $45 for adults, $40 for seniors 65 and older, and $12 for students. Season subscriptions purchased by September 30 offer a 20 percent discount over single admissions. Group discounts are available.

Admission to each of the February "Choral Connections" concerts is $20.

Tickets and information are available at stcharlessingers.com or by calling 630-513-5272. Tickets are also available at Townhouse Books, 105 N. Second Ave., St. Charles (checks or cash only at this ticket venue). Tickets may also be purchased at the door on the day of the concert, depending on availability.

St. Charles Singers

Founded and directed by Jeffrey Hunt, the St. Charles Singers is a chamber choir dedicated to choral music in all its forms. Hailed by American Record Guide as "a national treasure," the mixed-voice ensemble includes professional singers, choral directors, and voice instructors, some of whom perform with other top-tier Chicago choirs. Classics Today has called the ensemble "one of North America's outstanding choirs," citing "charisma and top-notch musicianship" that "bring character and excitement to each piece." The Chicago Tribune has described the St. Charles Singers as "splendidly disciplined, beautifully responsive" and proclaimed, "Chamber chorus singing doesn't get much better than this." Among the St. Charles Singers' prominent guest conductors have been renowned English composer John Rutter, founder of the Cambridge Singers; Philip Moore, composer and former music director at England's York Minster cathedral; and Grammy Award-winning American choir director Craig Hella Johnson. The choir launched in St. Charles, Illinois, in 1984 as the Mostly Madrigal Singers. stcharlessingers.com

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