DANCING TREE: CHORAL LANDSCAPES to Launch From ST. CHARLES SINGERS
Album features world-premiere recordings by Jake Runestad and Charles Forsberg, plus works by Britten, Stanford, and Debussy.
The St. Charles Singers, led by founder and music director Jeffrey Hunt, showcase works written expressly for them on 'Dancing Tree: Choral Landscapes,' the mixed-voice American chamber choir's new album of live-in-concert recordings of songs reflecting on and celebrating the natural world.
Available August 21, 2026, on Navona Records (NV6876), 'Dancing Tree: Choral Landscapes' will be released on all major streaming and digital download services, with physical CDs available for purchase directly from the St. Charles Singers at stcharlessingers.com.
Choral commissions
The title work, John Rutter's 'Dancing Tree' (2024), commissioned by and written for the St. Charles Singers, is heard here in its 2025 world-premiere performance at the choir's home venue, Baker Memorial United Methodist Church in the historic riverfront city of St. Charles, Illinois.
The St. Charles Singers under Hunt have enjoyed a decades-long association with the internationally revered English composer and choirmaster.
In a program note for 'Dancing Tree,' Rutter writes, 'I have enjoyed guest conducting this excellent choir on a number of occasions and Jeff Hunt, their founder-director, is a good friend. He shares my love of poetry, and was happy to accept my suggestion of a cycle of Charles Causley settings.'
Scored for choir and harp, Rutter's 'Dancing Tree' is a suite of eight poems by the celebrated 20th-century British poet whose writing embodies warmth, humor, and a deep concern for humanity.
'The music is quintessential John Rutter,' Hunt says. 'It reflects his own heartfelt connection to nature and admiration for English folk music.
'You'll hear intensely beautiful melodies that are very singable, amid a pleasing array of harmonies,' Hunt says. 'Listeners who enjoy Rutter's Christmas carols will love this piece.'
The album includes world-premiere recordings of works commissioned by the St. Charles Singers from two Midwest American composers.
Grammy-nominated, Emmy-winning composer Jake Runestad's 'Cello Songs' (2020) is scored for choir, cello, and piano, with text by poet and librettist Todd Boss. The work's four movements are named for the seasons of the year.
Runestad writes, 'The work moves through the seasons, from the gentle breezes of summer, to the fiery colors of autumn, to a soulful melancholy in winter, and ending with a rousing, beebop jazz finale of raindrops in spring!'
Charles Forsberg's 'Buttercup Days' is the opening movement of 'In Christopher's Time: Jazz Suite for Choir,' a set of six playful and inventive songs for choir, double bass, and piano based on A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh poetry set in the magical Hundred Acre Wood. The St. Charles Singers commissioned this 1988 choral arrangement of Forsberg's charming song cycle, originally scored for soprano and piano.
Stanford, Britten, Debussy
Charles Villiers Stanford's 'The Blue Bird,' Op.119, No. 3, is an exquisite late-Romantic choral setting of a poem by the English novelist and poet Mary Elizabeth Coleridge. It depicts a captivating vista where a bird 'whose wings were palest blue' soars across a blue sky and over a blue lake.
Benjamin Britten's 'Hymn to St. Cecilia,' Op. 27, opens with the words, 'In a garden shady this holy lady.' The three-movement piece is a setting of poet W.H. Auden's imaginative tribute to the patron saint of music and the power of the musical arts. It's considered a masterwork of 20th-century choral literature that gives voice to the choir's full expressive range.
For his 'Trois Chansons,' Claude Debussy combined elements of the late-medieval sound world with early 20th-century French Impressionism. Based on texts by Charles d'Orléans, a medieval poet-prince, the three independent pieces include a love song, a spring dance, and a harsh rejection of winter.
Album production and engineering
'Dancing Tree: Choral Landscapes' was produced and engineered by Hudson Fair in April 2018, May 2019, April 2024, and April 2025 at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church, St. Charles, Illinois.
St. Charles Singers
Now in its fourth decade, the St. Charles Singers, founded and directed by Jeffrey Hunt, has been hailed by American Record Guide as 'a national treasure.' Based in St. Charles, Illinois, the mixed-voice chamber choir includes professional singers, choral directors, and voice instructors, some of whom perform with other top-tier Chicago-area choirs. Classics Today has called the ensemble 'one of North America's outstanding choirs.' Choral Journal praised their 'versatile musicality, vibrant tone, and impeccable diction.' England's Choir and Organ declared, 'With a well-balanced and beautifully blended choral sound, the St. Charles Singers are totally committed to what they perform.'
