Chanticleer to Celebrate Christmas Early

Album cover of Joy to the World (from its Chanticleer Web page)

Having accounted for the December holiday events presented by Old First Concerts yesterday, today I discovered that Chanticleer will begin celebrating about two weeks later this month! To be a bit more specific, that is when their newest Christmas album will be released. To be even more specific, Joy to the World will become available this coming Friday, November 7. As many are likely to expect, Amazon.com has already created the Web page for processing pre-orders.

The scope of the contents is a wide one. It includes three sixteenth-century composers: Michael Praetorius, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Cristóbal de Morales. There are also three selections by Joanna Marsh, the only living composer on the album. The entire program is “framed” by the two most popular selections. It begins withj Lowell Mason’s “Joy to the World” in an arrangement by Adam Brett Ward and concludes with Franz Xavier Gruber’s “Silent Night” as arranged by Jared Graveley. As an alternative to Amazon, the album will also be sold for $20 through a Chanticleer Web page, which includes a generous amount of background material.

The release will be celebrated with a program entitled Happy Hour with Chanticleer. Appropriately, it will begin at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, November 18; and there will be concert beginning at 6:30 p.m. The venue will be the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, which is located at 1401 Howard Street. Further details will be made available by clicking on the RSVP hyperlink on the event page.

The following month will see the one performance of A Chanticleer Christmas in San Francisco. Details have not yet been announced, but the selections tend to reflect those initially planned by founder Louis Botto. Most likely the program will be framed by a candlelit chant procession at the beginning and an upbeat gospel celebration for the conclusion. The performance will begin at 8 p.m. on Sunday, December 21. The venue will be St. Ignatius Church, located at 650 Parker Avenue.