On Wednesday night, the all-male choir Chanticleer sang in the first installment of the 2007-2008 Artist Recital Series. Though performing numerous pieces in various styles and languages, the choir maintained a nuanced and restrained delivery throughout the concert.

As the choir began with the Elizabethan polyphony of �Sing Joyfully,� the density of interwoven parts was overwhelming, and, astonishingly, half the ensemble could sing as high as most women. While adult male sopranos and altos are found in several well-known choral groups, such as the King�s Singers, who have also visited Oberlin in recent years, their rarity elsewhere makes seeing them in performance as exciting and unusual as hearing a rare Amazonian songbird, long thought dead.

According to College senior Rick Lawrence, �Groups like these use countertenors for a couple of reasons. One, they want to retain an all-male ensemble. Two, countertenors have a different timbre than female voices and are able to blend better with lower male voices.�

�El Grillo,� from the second portion of Chanticleer�s segmented program, almost jarringly set the concert�s tone. After the dense sacred music in the beginning of the concert, this comical, �hook-laden� ditty by Josquin des Pres signaled that the night�s performance would jump throughout the larger spectrum of choral music.

The ensemble frequently introduced the next portion of the program, establishing a cheery relationship with the audience despite the formality of the concert setting and the singers� tuxedos. This, along with Chanticleer�s ability to genre-hop through des Pres, Mahler, Samuel Barber and Francis Poulenc, exhibited the group�s seasoned yet warm showmanship that created an even, easy pace to the event.

What made each piece even more digestible for the audience was the brevity of most selections. It was only in the final parts of the two acts that this was not case, with Mahler�s expansive �Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,� which, besides being longer than many of the pieces before it, had more time to explore itself. This is not to say that earlier pieces were somehow deficient compared to it, but that they are formed with different intentions based on their sizes, as the goals of a novella might be to a short story. Chanticleer succeeded in delivering it with all the darkness and brooding it deserved.

In the last portion of the concert, the pieces were longer than average. Here though, it was because they were exploring various vernacular musics, in the form of Irish folk songs, American standards and a gospel medley. Personally, I am conflicted about what to think about the placement of this music at the end of the concert.

On one hand, because Chanticleer was genre-hopping, it makes complete sense to include them. Also, and perhaps most importantly, the ensemble was able to present the pieces just as well as they did the earlier vocal music, as they doo-wopped, made trumpet sounds and let loose vibrato-rich male soprano wails (imagine a handful of Christina Aguileras in tuxes) from the high parts of their range.

However, is putting this kind of music at the end of the concert intending to say, �Now that we�ve done that pretty old timey junk, here�s something you�ll actually understand?� Or is it simply a sweet treat for the concertgoers after an hour and 45 minutes of more staid repertoire? Would it be possible for this vernacular music to be further integrated into their program, side by side with the others?

The piece that nearly integrated vernacular songs into the program was contemporary American composer Steven Stucky�s �Cradle Songs,� which was late in the first half of the concert. While in Portuguese, Polish and Tobagonian, and based on real lullabies for children from Brazil, Poland and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, in no way were these arrangements a set of cute numbers to quiet children to sleep. They were short art songs, shaped very similarly to the other older pieces in the program, but imbued with a portion of the diverse sonic avenues explored by contemporary classic music. Of course, it can be expected for �lullabies� performed in concert settings to be re-appropriated as more complex art music that nods to its former self, but this was still the farthest point from the Canon that Chanticleer strayed, before their show-stopping finale. Simply, if Chanticleer is genre-hopping anyway, why not insert vernacular music in a more integrated spot on the concert program?

This final section also included a more localized announcement made by one of the tenors, Todd Wedge, OC �03, a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory. He kidded with the audience about the time between then and now: �I only recognize my professors in the audience tonight.� He then rushed back into the back of the formation of singers, once again one of the voices of Chanticleer.

Despite the conflict I had about one aspect of their programming, there is no doubt that Chanticleer sang their material almost effortlessly, with precision and balance, and that Wedge�s return was no doubt exuberant. For more information about the group, and its soon-to-be-released 29th recording, �Let it Snow,� visit www.chanticleer.org.