St. Charles Singers leave audiences with 'Music for a While'
The sounds of a professional chamber choir will fill churches in the west suburbs this weekend, when the St. Charles Singers concludes its 28th season.
Founder and artistic director Jeffrey Hunt leads the choir in "Music for a While," a program of soothing songs for spring. Performances will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 19, at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church, 307 Cedar Ave., St. Charles; and at 7 p.m. Sunday, May 20, at St. Michael Catholic Church, 310 S. Wheaton Ave., Wheaton.
The internationally recognized mixed-voice ensemble will sing calming compositions on springtime themes - life's pleasures, romantic love and the delights of the natural world.
The St. Charles Singers' season-finale program takes its title from a song by English Baroque composer Henry Purcell about music's ability to lift the spirits. The song opens with the words, "Music for a while/Shall all your cares beguile."
Concertgoers will spend a while with songs by Arthur Baynon, Benjamin Britten, Stuart Churchill, William Dawson, James Erb, Gabriel Fauré, Ola Gjeilo, Nils Lindberg, Cecilia McDowall, Claudio Monteverdi, Joseph Twist, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Tomás Luis de Victoria.
The choir will perform two colorful "Choral Dances" from Britten's opera "Gloriana," Op. 53: "Country Girls," for sopranos and altos, and "Rustics and Fishermen" for tenors and basses.
The program salutes the season of love with Churchill's arrangement of the Appalachian folk song "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair."
The choir will sing "Not, Cecilia that I juster am" from Lindberg's suite of Elizabethan English poetry titled "O, Mistress Mine," written by the Swedish composer in 1988.
McDowall's "A Fancy of Folk Songs," from 2003, includes charming settings of four English folk songs. The composer describes the songs as a "joyful celebration of youthful love and courtship."
Twist's "On the Night Train," from 2006, will take listeners on an evocative moonlit ride under "a mystic sky" through his native Australia's remote, isolated bush country.
Vaughan Williams's Mass in G Minor is among his more contemplative and otherworldly creations. Its "Gloria" movement unleashes the full harmonic power of the choral forces.
Audiences will hear Baynon's "When Rooks Fly Homeward," Dawson's Black American spiritual "Soon Ah Will Be Done," Erb's "Shenandoah," Fauré's "Cantique de Jean Racine," Gjeilo's "Prelude," Monteverdi's "Lamento D'Arianna," Purcell's "Hear My Prayer, O Lord," and Victoria's "Pange Lingua."
Harpist Stephen Hartman will perform Stephen Paulus's "A Summer's Love," a solo instrumental version of a love duet from the composer's opera "Summer." The harpist also will perform with the choir in the works by Fauré, McDowall and Churchill.
For the "Music for a While" program, St. Charles Singers sopranos will include Ingrid Burrichter of Batavia; Amanda Brex-Castillo of Cary; Meredith DuBon of Chicago; Lori Bormet of Forest Park; Kate Jeffrey, Candace Kless, and Jennifer Mamminga of Geneva; Laura Johnson of Hanover Park; Cynthia Spiegel of La Fox; Grace Bardsley of St. Charles; and Karen Lukose of Winfield.
Alto voices will include Valerie Heinkel and Sarah Underhill of Aurora; Bethany Wolford of Cary; Julie Popplewell of North Aurora; Bridget Kancler of Oak Park; Liz Hutchinson of Plainfield; Jennifer Hunt of St. Charles; and Debby Wilder of Wheeling.
Tenors are Gregor King of Batavia; Bryan Kuntsman of DeKalb; Andy Jeffrey of Geneva; Tim Bergmann and David Hunt of St. Charles; Jay Cunningham and Steve Williamson of West Chicago; and Bob Boyd of Westmont.
The bass section will include Phil Nohl and Doug Peters of Aurora; Anthony Quaranta of Carol Stream; Nate Cook of Crystal Lake; David Hartley of Lake in the Hills; Ernie Klapmeier and Mike Popplewell of North Aurora; and Michael Thoms of Warrenville.
Single tickets to "Music for a While" are $30 each for general admission and $20 for students and seniors. Tickets 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 also may be purchased at the door on the day of the concert, depending on availability. Group discounts are available.