St. Charles Singers to make solo debut at Ravinia Festival August 20

The St. Charles Singers, conducted by Jeffrey Hunt, will make its solo debut at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Ill., at 1 p.m. on Sunday, August 20, with “American Reflections,” the program that the professional chamber choir performed on its June concert tour of England, where audience members included renowned British composer and choirmaster John Rutter.

The choir’s concert is part of Ravinia’s 2017 BGH Classics series held in 450-seat Bennett Gordon Hall on the festival grounds.

“The concert showcases radiant works by revered American composers,” says Hunt, the ensemble’s founder and music director. “They mirror and speak to our national spirit.”

Some of the reflections radiate from bodies of water. The concert’s centerpiece, Dominick Argento’s “Walden Pond,” from 1996, is a sublime five-song cycle for chorus, three cellos, and harp. Inspired by author Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden,” a meditation on nature and self-reliance, the virtuosic, evocative work comprises movements titled “The Pond,” “Angling,” “Observing,” “Extolling,” and “Walden Revisited.”

Other water works include Eric Whitacre’s “Water Night,” based on an Octavio Paz poem; William Hawley’s “Beautiful River,” a choral setting of the gospel hymn “Shall We Gather at the River?”; and James Erb’s arrangement of the tender folk song “Shenandoah,” which speaks of the Missouri River.

The mixed-voice choir of 32 accomplished singers will also perform the following American works under Hunt’s direction:

• Randall Thompson’s “Praise Ye the Lord” from his “Twelve Canticles” for unaccompanied mixed voices

• Aaron Copland and Irving Fine’s arrangement of the traditional ballad “Long Time Ago” for chorus and piano from Copland’s “Old American Songs.” In an unusual twist, Hunt has transcribed the piano part for three cellos.

• Jake Runestad’s dramatic “As the Caged Bird Sings,” based on a text by celebrated African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose parents were freed slaves

• Morten Lauridsen’s expressive and deeply thoughtful setting of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Dirait-on” (So They Say), written with piano accompaniment. A harpist will perform with the choir, instead of a pianist.

• Stacey V. Gibbs’s captivating arrangement of the traditional spiritual “Great God Almighty”

• Kevin Siegfried’s arrangement of “I Hunger and Thirst,” a traditional Shaker song

• Shawn Kirchner’s soulful rendering of the beautiful folk tune “Bright Morning Stars” and Kirchner’s bluegrass-infused setting of the 19th-century spiritual “Unclouded Day”

The concert includes one non-American work, the Newfoundland folk song “She’s Like the Swallow,” arranged by English composer Edward Chapman. It’s a selection from the St. Charles Singers’ critically acclaimed 2016 album “Bushes & Briars: Folk-Songs for Choirs Books 1 & 2” (MSR Classics).

Now in its 33rd concert season, the St. Charles Singers made its first and only other Ravinia Festival appearance in July 2002 when it sang alongside the Dale Warland Singers and Apollo Chorus of Chicago in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s performances of Beethoven’s Fantasy for Orchestra, Piano and Chorus, Op. 80, and Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125, conducted by James Conlon.

Tickets and Information

Single tickets for the St. Charles Singers “American Reflections” concert at Ravinia are $10 and are available from the Ravinia Festival box office online at https://www.ravinia.org and by phone, (847) 266-5100.

St. Charles Singers

Founded and directed by Jeffrey Hunt, the St. Charles Singers is a professional chamber choir dedicated to choral music in all its forms. The mixed-voice choir launched in St. Charles, Ill., in 1984 as the Mostly Madrigal Singers. ClassicsToday.com calls the ensemble “one of North America’s outstanding choirs,” citing “charisma and top-notch musicianship” that “bring character and excitement to each piece.”