04.06.06
Nine Men Sing Faultlessly
Danbury News Times
Jim Pegolotti

It all started in Minnesota at St. Olaf's College, nationally known for the quality of its choral groups. From the seed of four St. Olaf men ten years ago has arisen a national group of nine singers with the name Cantus (pronounced CON-tuse); five tenors, two baritones and two basses. What they proved last Friday night at Trinity Pawling's Gardiner Theater was that they would be hard to top in the world of male choruses. I have never heard a finer blend of voices.

Their program began with the religious plainsong of 12 centuries ago and ended with an encore of Billy Joel's "Lullaby, Goodnight My Angel." In between, the tuxedoed singers showed an incredible variety of tonal quality and dynamic control. When they sang "Four Peasant Songs" by Igor Stravinsky, their sound had the veracity of a true Russian male chorus. For the "Ave Maria" of the 20th century composer Franz Biebl, the antiphonal effect of six voices against three gave a soft beauty and resonance of centuries past to the well-known Latin words.

It was a program meant to bring an international flavor to the audience. Songs were in English, Latin, Finnish, Russian, Estonian, and Norwegian. Knowing the Scandanavian base of so many Minnesotans, it was no surprise to find emphasis on songs from that region in the Cantus program. The men sang mainly in a semi-circular arrangement, often with bodies gently swaying, but never overdoing movement. And they didn't only sing. Beginning the second half of the program, they emerged from the wings carrying brightly colored tuned tubes, sat down on chairs and proceeded to strike their thighs rhythmically in a piece entitled "Flight," stated by one of the singers as a piece "for boomwhacker ensemble."

Two works remain strongest in memory. The first was "Songs of the Ancient Sea" by the contemporary Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (1930- ), who adapted his homeland's folk melodies into a vocal tapestry of the sounds of the sea. Often with a tenor solo, the seven songs melded one into the other, sometimes with the eerie sounds of ocean winds, the calls of the fishermen, or the sounds of seagulls. The capacity of the nine men to evoke fortissimos of crashing waves or balanced pianissimos of a calm ocean resulted in enthusiastic applause by one of the largest audiences to attend a Pawling concert in years.

The second work that I recall with special choral pleasure, but ultimately with sadness, was a program substitution: "Private First Class Jesse Givens," a work by Lee Hoiby (1926- ) commissioned by Cantus and premiered earlier this month in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The current Middle East war comes crashingly to mind in this work based on a letter by Givens to his wife, discovered after he had died in 2003, pinned in a tank that had tumbled into a ditch in Iraq. He had arrived only three weeks before, but in that time had the presence of mind to write a letter to his pregnant wife Melissa should he not return.

The ever-present clear verbal articulation by the Cantus singers floated the words above the simple melodies of Hoiby. In his letter, Givens verbalized the love he had for Melissa, for his stepson, nicknamed "Toad," and his as yet unborn child, which he had already nicknamed "Bean." He ended his letter urging his wife to "Do me a favor, after you tuck Toad and Bean in, give them hugs and kisses for me. Go outside and look at the stars and count them. Don't forget to smile."

Overall, it was a memorable concert.