St. Charles Singers to perform final concerts of the season in April

The St. Charles Singers’ season finale concerts will take place Saturday and Sunday, April 20-21 to mark the start of the chamber choir’s 40th anniversary celebration with a program featuring songs about nature, particularly flowers, and romantic love.

Titled “Past As Prologue: Voices in Bloom,” the concerts are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 20, at St. Michael Catholic Church, 310 S. Wheaton Ave. in Wheaton; and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 21, at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church, 307 Cedar Ave. in St. Charles.

“We’ll be presenting a heartfelt musical bouquet to our audiences,” Jeffrey Hunt, the choir’s founder and artistic director, sais in a news release.

As a nod to the past, the choir will offer works they’ve cherished over the years, including folk songs from the English choral tradition. They’ll also introduce pieces they’ve never performed.

An hour before each concert, Marcus Jansen, who sings in the choir’s tenor section, will give a 30-minute talk about flowers mentioned in the songs and their past and present uses in gardening and landscaping.

Tickets for “Past As Prologue” cost $45 for adults, $40 for seniors and $12 for students. Tickets and information are available at stcharlessingers.com/tickets or by calling 630-513-5272. Tickets also are available at Townhouse Books, 105 N. Second Ave. in St. Charles (checks or cash only at this ticket venue). Tickets may be bough at the door on the day of the concert, depending on availability.

Flower Power

Flowers are a centerpiece of the spring concerts. The choir will perform 20th-century English composer Benjamin Britten’s “Five Flower Songs,” his settings of poems from past eras: “To Daffodils,” “The Succession of the Four Sweet Months,” “Marsh Flowers,” “The Evening Primrose,” and “Ballad of the Green Broom.”

Bushes and Briars

The mixed-voice choir will reprise six songs from their critically acclaimed album, “Bushes & Briars: Folk-Songs for Choirs Books 1 & 2,” named for the collection of traditional British folk tunes edited by renowned English composer and choirmaster John Rutter. Rutter has spoken glowingly of the St. Charles Singers and has conducted them on multiple occasions over the decades.

Songs include Rutter’s arrangements of “O Waly, Waly” (Wail,Wail) and “Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron”; “The Oak and the Ash,” arranged by Edward Barstow; “Early One Morning,” arranged by David Willcocks; “The Turtle Dove,” by Ralph Vaughan Williams; and Gustav Holst’s arrangement of “I Love My Love.”

New Choral Arrangements

Receiving their premieres are Hunt’s choral arrangements of five songs from American composer Alec Wilder’s children’s bedtime collection, “Lullabies and Night Songs,” originally written for voice and piano. Hunt has arranged “Star Wish,” “Many Million Years Ago,” “Seal Lullaby,” “Douglas Mountain” and “Fiddle dee dee.”

Also new to the choir’s repertoire is Morten Lauridsen’s setting of James Agee’s poem “Sure on This Shining Night.”

New, too, is Eric Whitacre’s “Sing Gently,” a four-part song for which he wrote the words and music. Written in the pandemic year of 2020, Whitacre premiered it over YouTube with a “virtual choir” of more than 17,000 singers from 129 countries.

Rounding out the program is an early St. Charles Singers commission: Charles Forsberg’s “In Christopher’s Time: Jazz Suite for Choir in Five Movements,” inspired by the Christopher Robin character in A. A. Milne’s book “Winnie-the-Pooh.” Written for the St. Charles Singers in 1988, it was last performed by the choir in 1991, with Rutter as guest conductor.

Blossoming Voices

St. Charles Singers ensemble members performing in “Past As Prologue: Voices in Bloom” include sopranos Jeanne Fornari and Karen Rockett of Batavia; Amy Bearden and Ingrid Burrichter, Chicago; Marybeth Kurnat, DeKalb; Mary Kunstman, Elburn; Laura Johnson, Hanover Park; Meredith Taylor Mollica, Naperville; and AnDréa James and Cynthia Spiegel, St. Charles.

The alto section includes Valerie Bollero and Margaret Fox, Batavia; Kelly Grba, Bolingbrook; Nicole Tolentino, Glendale Heights; Jennifer Gingrich, Naperville; Chelsea King, North Aurora; Debra Wilder, Vernon Hills; and Karen Archbold and Rachel Miller, Wheaton.

Tenors are Rob Campbell, DeKalb; Bryan Kunstman and Bradley Staker, Elburn; Nicholas Metzger, Elgin; Marcus Jansen, Geneva; Stephen Mollica, Naperville; Gregor King, North Aurora; Jonathan Cramer, Waukegan; David Hunt, Wayne; and Steve Williamson, West Chicago.

Bass singers are Brandon Fox, Batavia; Douglas Peters, Chicago; Nate Coon, Crystal Lake; Jess Koehn, Downers Grove; Stephen Uhl, Glen Ellyn; Michael Popplewell, North Aurora; Antonio Quaranta, River Grove; Aaron James, St. Charles; and Drayton Eggleson, Sycamore.

In addition to singing bass, Uhl is the concert’s collaborative pianist.