Male vocalists plan MCA concert Chanticleer sings music of all ages

When he was a music educator years ago, Joseph Jennings liked to browse through the bins at his local record store in search of early classical music written during medieval and Renaissance times. A singer in his own right, Jennings naturally gravitated to recordings by Chanticleer, an all-male vocal group that records music by the likes of Josquin Desprez, who lived from 1450 to 1521, and Henry Purcell, who lived from 1659 to 1695.

“I bought a record and listened to it and liked it,” said Jennings. “It sounded like a grown-up glee club.”

Not long after, Jennings suggested that the college where he was teaching invite Chanticleer to give a concert during the performing arts season. They did, and he loved the group. After the concert, he chatted with some of the members, who told him auditions were being held that weekend for new singers. Jennings, who is a countertenor, attended the audition, was hired and took a year’s leave of absence to sing with the group.

Within a year, he became Chanticleer’s music director.

“It was like running away to join the circus,” said Jennings by phone from his home in San

Francisco, where Chanticleer is based. “I thought it would be fun. And it was. And here I still am.”

Jennings will lead the 12-person Chanticleer in a concert at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 24, at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. The concert will include music from a variety of genres, including early music, gospel, pop and works by contemporary composers of choral repertoire.

Named for the singing rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” Chanticleer was formed in 1978 by Louis Botto, a tenor who also was interested in early music but had little opportunity to perform it. Botto died in 1997, but his story about convening nine singers around his dining room table and their first sellout concert in San Francisco is legendary among music lovers.

Another of Botto’s goals was to create full-time jobs for singers, which he did. Chanticleer rehearses each weekday from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m., taking off days only for outreach educational activities in the San Francisco Bay area.

In addition to performing more than 75 concerts a year, the ensemble has made 28 recordings, including “How Sweet the Sound: Spirituals and Traditional Gospel Music,” which was released last fall. With several Grammy Awards and other prestigious awards, it’s easy to see why the New Yorker magazine called Chanticleer “the world’s reigning male chorus.”

“We follow a tradition of all-male groups that started back hundreds and hundreds of years ago,” said Jennings, who grew up singing in church groups in Georgia. “We wanted to re-create the sound that one might have heard back then, especially for sacred music.”

Jennings compared the all-male membership to a string quartet, in which all of the instruments are from one family. Although the male sopranos can reach high notes, some of the literature is even too high for them. But for Jennings, the only real limitation on the singers is that some music is written for larger choral ensembles, and while Chanticleer can present the texture of any piece, said the director, it cannot provide the volume of a 100-voice chorus.

“We’ve been doing this a long time,” said Jennings. “Here we are 27 years old. Our group is now older than some of its members. We consider ourselves a San Francisco group, but over the years, we’ve come to belong to the country.”

For Chanticleer tickets, call 581-1755 or visit www.mainecenterforthearts.org.