About Chanticleer

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Called “the world's reigning male chorus,” by the New Yorker magazine, and named 2008 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America, Chanticleer will perform more than 100 concerts in 2009-10, the GRAMMY Award-winning ensemble’s 32nd Season.  Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for their “tonal luxuriance and crisply etched clarity,” Chanticleer will tour to 21 of the United States and 12 foreign countries  this season, including appearances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Amsterdam 's Concertgebouw, Vienna's Musikverein, and Prague's Rudolfinum In 2009 Chanticleer made debut appearances in Ireland and the People's Republic of China and will return to the latter in June for Expo 2010 in Shanghai. Highlights of the 2009-10 season will be Chanticleer's first National Youth Choral Festival in San Francisco in March, appearances at two American Choral Directors Association conferences, and the release of a new recording - “Best of Chanticleer” and a new DVD “Fireside Christmas with Chanticleer.”

Chanticleer - based in San Francisco - is known around the world as “an orchestra of voices” for the seamless blend of its twelve 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 24-concert 2009-10 Bay Area Season opens in September with “In Time Of” songs and love and loss, war and peace chosen from the breadth of Chanticleer's seven-century repertoire. Chanticleer's busy Christmas season will include its fifth annual appearance on NBC's TODAY Show, performances of its beloved A Chanticleer Christmas around the country and the Bay Area, and the program's broadcast on over 225 national public radio stations. “The Singing Life” a concert by Chanticleer and the 300 high school singers participating in the National Youth Choral Festival” will take place at Davies Hall in March. Chanticleer returns to its early music roots in June with “For Thy Soul's Salvation: Music for England's Monarchs.”

Chanticleer's recordings are distributed by Chanticleer, Rhino Records, I-tunes and others, and are all available on Chanticleer's website.  Let it Snow, a collection of Christmas music released in 2007, was on the BillBoard charts for twelve 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 two GRAMMY® awards for Classical Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without Conductor) and for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. The DVD accompanying Chanticleer's most recent release Mission Road, has been broadcast on public television. With the help of individual contributions and foundation and corporate support, the Ensemble involves thousands of young people annually in its extensive education program which includes in-school clinics and workshops, Chanticleer Youth Choral Festivals™ in the Bay Area and around the country, master classes for university students nationwide, and the Chanticleer in Sonoma summer workshop for adult choral singers.  2008 saw the release of The Singing Life - a documentary about Chanticleer's work with young people.

Chanticleer's long-standing commitment to commissioning and performing new works was recognized in 2008 by the inaugural Dale Warland Commissioning Award and   the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming for the 2006-07 Season in which ten new works were premiered.  Among the seventy composers commissioned in Chanticleer's history are Mark Adamo, Mason Bates, Régis Campo, Chen Yi, David Conte, Shawn Crouch, Douglas J. Cuomo, Brent Michael Davids, Anthony Davis, Guido López-Gavilán, William Hawley, Jake Heggie, Jackson Hill, Kamran Ince, Jeeyoung Kim, Tania León, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, Michael McGlynn, John Musto, Tarik O'Regan, Shulamit Ran, Bernard Rands, Steven Sametz, Carlos Sanchez-Guttierez, Paul Schoenfield, Steven Stucky, John Tavener, Augusta Read Thomas and Janike Vandervelde.

Named for the “clear-singing” rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Chanticleer was founded in 1978 by tenor Louis Botto, who sang in the Ensemble until 1989 and served as Artistic Director until his death in 1997. In 1999, Christine Bullin joined Chanticleer as President & General Director. After l0 years as a tenor in the ensemble, Matthew Oltman became Music Director in 2008, replacing Joseph H. Jennings who became Music Director Emeritus in 2009.

Chanticleer is the current recipient of major grants from The Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, The Walter and Elise Haas Fund, The William Randolph Hearst Foundation, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The Bernard Osher Foundation, Wells Fargo Bank, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, and The National Endowment for the Arts. Chanticleer's activities as a not-for-profit corporation are supported by its administrative staff and Board of Trustees.

Chanticleer^® and An Orchestra of Voices^® are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.