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Our American Journey
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - American Journey the result of hard work
The harmony is outstanding and in combination with the right song can ring a powerful emotional cord such as "Calling My Children Home". I doubt you can find a better group than Chanticleer.
Rating: - Amazing, ecclectic album
This CD is a great example of Chanticleer's phenomenal versatility, and it has something for everyone to appreciate. The Appalacian twang on the two Billings pieces is a bit much, but otherwise Chanticleer is in top form here and really shows what they are made of. As for the recording itself, something about the micing or acoustics in the recording process causes the countertenors to be just a tad too strong on a few tracks, but it's not a major problem.
To me, the most extraordinary tracks are: The Un-Covered Wagon with it's surreal effects and incredible array of vocal techniques, Willow Weep For Me, Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair (Michael Lichtenauer's solo floats so effortlessly in a mixed vocal register, I have never heard anything like it!), and Whispers.
Rating: - Warning: This CD Is Addictive
I purchased this CD after hearing this magnificent choral group sing "Calling My Children Home" in a recent concert. Written by Doyle Lawson (from the group "Quicksilver"), Charlie Waller and Robert Yates, the song is a standard bluegrass number I had known for years (Emmy Lou Harris for one has recorded it); but I had no idea it had found its way to San Francisco. Chanticleer has made this song their own. I cannot imagine anyone else's version coming close to theirs.
The group sings 17 other songs on this CD, most of them arranged by Joseph Jennings, Chanticleer's music director. Their version of William Billings' "David's Lamentation," a Sacred Harp work, will blow you away. Another favorite of mine is "Wayfaring' Stranger." There are also two Stephen Foster songs included, "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" and "Camptown Races" as well as Gershwin and other American composers.
There seems to be no kind of music that this group cannot sing better than most other groups. They remind us that there is no musical instrument more beautiful than the human voice.
This CD should be one for the time capsule.
Rating:  - Well worth buying
Chanticleer fans know what to expect in terms of vocal quality, and won't be disappointed. I agree with another reviewer that the Appalachian accent is a little over the top, but I thought the shape-note style was perfect: brilliant sound, but not that nasal.
I enjoyed the many styles of music in this CD, but since I tend to listen to CDs straight through as albums, I found it a little disconcerting to go so suddenly from one style to the next (e.g., Mexican Baroque to shape note).
That being said, everything is splendidly, sensitively performed. The renditions of "Whispers" and "The Un-Covered Wagon" are breathtaking. By all means, buy and enjoy this!
Rating: - Good variety of American Choral Music
This album features a wonderful selection of "American" choral music. I'm not a big fan of the "stylized" singing of the shape-note pieces (with the nasal voices), but that is my only complaint. My favorite piece is Steven Stucky's "Whispers" which is an artfully crafted homage to Orlando Gibbons' "Drop, Drop, Slow Tears" and William Byrd's "Ave Verum Corpus." Joseph Jennings and Chanticleer effectively demonstrate that there is no "defining" American choral music and it is this rich panoply of variety which is so enchanting!
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