Spring mega-tour 08 update

A couple more stops on our mega-tour of the South (and Pennsylvania?!) during March and April: Really great to sing a couple of shows in my home state of Kentucky, too. My gramma and some other family made it to the WKU show, and brought along some homemade fudge and other goodies! One of our stops was Corbin, a small town which happens to be the site of Colonel Sanders' Cafe and Museum--home of the original Kentucky Fried Chicken!. No excuse to miss this stop...

We gave tight shows across the tour, with warm audiences (review here), talented kids to clinic in three states, and some great audience-captured performances:






On our two-day drive home, our van decided to give Eric a chance to see the St. Louis arch, as we travelled north through Missouri. We couldn't wait to get home from this twenty-two day tour, but we've had a good time. Nice to arrive back in the Twin Cities with nice weather: all of our significant others have been stuck with snow, cold, and sleet for the past couple of weeks, while we were outside playing Speedminton and wiffleball...

Take care everybody--we'll see you in your town, or at the pop shows in May! -G

Grueling Questions pt. Deux!

Earlier this season, we presented some answers to pressing questions posed to the Cantus guys about life, music, and fun. Here's part two of those interviews.

Working as a team is lots of fun, but what are your personal goals?


Shahzore Shah: "As a performer, I aim to stretch my vocal and general artistic potential far
beyond perceived limits."

Eric Hopkins "to someday get my Master's degree and teach at the college level.

Gary Ruschman: Sing better. Write more music. Get some sleep. Do a graphic novel.

Tom McNichols: To make a career out of performing while maintaining some semblence of "normal" life

Dashon Burton: I hope to be able to sing in multiple touring ensembles that span a wide range of genres.

Do you have any rituals or things you do before you go out to perform?

Michael Jones: "I never wear shoes untill just before walking out on stage. They make me tense."

Eric Hopkins: " Jump up and down about three or four times"

Aaron humble: "Not really. If I have to sing something big for a matinee I usually have a good greasy breakfast (omelet, turkey sausage, buttery toast, mmmm)"


Finally, If you couldn’t sing, which talent would you most like to have?


Gary Ruschman: "Either creative writing, conducting, or being a fierce bass player."

Dashon Burton: "I would like to have a great memory for detail for use in things like trivia, research, and general academia. I would also love to be able to play Bossa Nova guitar and speak many languages."

Adam Reinwald: "I wish I could run very fast and, most importantly, jump really high. I have always wanted to play professional basketball."

Tom: "I do have it, woodworking. Otherwise I would say, extreme skiier."

Fun stops on tour

Given a coveted rare day off in the schedule, we always head to nearby attractions or cities to see the sights, try new restaurants, or spend a day in a park. This tour is no exception, so a few of the guys went to spend time with former Cantus member Mani, and a couple of us headed down to Philadelphia to catch the new touring Star Wars science exhibit.



Philadelphia must really put a lot of effort into community art, because we found incredibly photorealistic murals all over the city, like this one. Gorgeous!


The science museum was inundated with spectators, all there to view the vintage costumes and models, do some hands-on building of robotics and vehicles with magnetic propulsion, and learn about examples of real-life future-engineering for extended space travel. Of course, there was a cadre of actors in costume there to pose with all the kids, big and small!

This tour is pretty immense--more than three weeks, so it's good we get to have a little fun between shows. After tomorrow night's show in Pennsylvania, we head south to the Carolinas, Alabama, my home state of Kentucky, Georgia, then back to Alabama again. Lots of miles, but hopefully some fun times, good shows, and lots of new people to meet.





Another treat came at our late arrival to our first Pennsylvania hotel, when the members of Inpulse (http://www.inpmusic.com/) walked through the door, having just performed a show at the other university in town that evening. Very very strange to have two Minnesota vocal groups booked in the same town on the east coast at the same time!

Recording. Then more recording. Followed by some recording.

As promised, here's a quick rundown of what happened in the past two weeks with Cantus. The short answer: lots of media!

We had such a resounding success with our All is Calm theatre project that we wanted to record it for distribution by the Fall. So we decided to take two days right away in March to record All is Calm (here's a video montage sneak preview):



As for our annual recording project, rather than head to a remote concert hall for a week in June, we decided to record our upcoming pop shows at the Southern Theater to create a live album instead. It saves us some resources, but gives a whole new experience to us and the audience alike. So if you make it to those shows, you might just get captured in the audience! We welcome two collaborators for the shows, multi-instrumentalist Lee Blaske and our favorite artistic partner, percussionist Dave Hagedorn.

To further our media saturation last week, MPR and American Public Media captured a lot of material, including interviews and our collaborative work with the St. Olaf Choir for broadcast. One song was just featured on Tuesday's Performance Today, and our combined session with the Ole Choir will be featured on another broadcast.

Listen here (we're near the end): Performance Today, 3/18/08


To round out the week, we spent an afternoon being filmed in HD by a local filmmaker who is producing a documentary on the Minnesota choral scene. We filmed five numbers, and hopefully we'll get to show you some footage very soon.

G

Touring and teaching mayhem, 2008 style...

First of all, I should mention that Dashon was unwittingly assuming the Superman pose while we were teaching in Houston--where Cantus reunited with former member Phil Moody, who now is in charge of a big high school music program in Texas. Just like they say, things are big in Texas, and we had a huge day-long festival! On this tour also worked with University of Houston's fantastic college choirs, and Cantus made its Houston Friends of Music debut on the lovely Stude Concert Hall stage at Rice University (review here). What a great place to sing. Despite a large size, the sound on stage is quite intimate, so it was a joy to make music there.

Slipping out early from the sessions with the college choirs, Dashon and I headed across campus to be interviewed on Houston Public Radio (link here).

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Here's a shot of the Cantus Mobile Office ©, where we get our work done* while we are on tour. Part of our preparation for our pop shows in May involves writing new arrangements (which you can see me toiling away on here)--thank goodness for notation software!

If anyone is keeping score, the Macs are currently leading the PCs 5-3 in the ensemble, plus two iPhones (not that I am dissatisfied with my Powerbook, but Steve, if you're out there, would you like to make Apple the official laptop of Cantus and throw in some new machines?!).


*hopefully

In other news, if you are a member, you can now catch Cantus on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cantus/7671804290




See you next time, when I'll talk about some quick turnaround on new Cantus recording projects, getting "old school" with the St. Olaf choir, Cantus on TV, and other newsworthy items.

Cheers,

Gary

Welcomes for 2008

Hi, gang:

Welcome to part two of the 07-08 season of Cantus. We now take some time to catch you up on lots of Cantus news and happenings!

Our self-titled release this season was just named one of the top ten for 2007 on NPR!

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We also welcome tenor Eric Hopkins to the ensemble. He joins us after a number of years with Dale Warland, and lots of singing in the Twin cities. A quick study, Eric prepared our touring program (about two hours of music) with only two weeks of rehearsal--a large feat! We are very excited to have him along on our travels.

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Cantus now has videos up on YouTube! Just visit:

http://www.youtube.com/cantussings

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The biggest news for the group this month is that our very own bass, Tom McNichols, is heading to the Met in New York City in February, after winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Minnesota District and Upper Midwest Regionals! He'll complete against young singers from all over the country for a shot at cash prizes, national exposure with a live radio broadcast, and a spot with the Met's young artist program. Good Luck, Tom-- We're all rooting for you! http://www.metoperafamily.org

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As for touring, we headed out to southern California for a couple of shows, trading the frigid land of Minnesota
for a balmy (though chilly by San Diego standards) 55 degrees at La Jolla's St. James by the Sea Series! We performed a memorial concert and gave an education opportunity at Bishop's School the next morning, where the choir was getting ready to compete with a Keith Hampton arrangement from Anton Armstrong's choral series, and Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque--both familiar territory for Cantus, so it was a fun and easy clinic to give.

We then headed up to UC-Riverside to do a show for a small but very warm audience despite a pretty chilly night. Special thanks to Denise, Melanie, and all the staff there, who were wonderful hosts! After the show we found that Riverside rolls up its sidewalks pretty early, though to be fair our show was on a Tuesday night. A few of us tried to go out after the show for a bite, but nothing was really open after 10:30...win some, lose some, I guess. Couldn't really stay out late anyway, since we had an early departure to get back to LAX in the morning.

Well, we've got some time at home now, doing some strategic planning for the group during February, then we head back out again mid-month. We'll be in touch again soon!

Welcome

Welcome to the new home of Cantus' travel and touring blog.

Here's a reprint of our last blog from the 2007 Boston Pops Holiday Tour, look for more postings once we hit the road again in late January '08:

Wrapping things up for the Pops tour, our last show of the Holiday tour with them happened last night.

The scheduled plane ride to Newark got cancelled--the weather hit hard again in Boston town--so we shuffled off to the Amtrack station, once we got word over the phone and hopped on a six hour train ride down instead. The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) pushed the show back an hour to accommodate the bad weather travelling, and the show kicked off just after 8pm. Wonderful crowd, truly amazing concert hall (gorgeous looks and sound), and Maestro Lockhart announced from the stage that it wouldn't be the last time that Cantus would be seen with the Pops--what a thrill! It appears that all parties were very happy with our performances and collaboration with the orchestra. We do hope that another collaboration will come very soon.


Feels good that all our hard work paid off, and we definitely stretched ourselves on the tour, both musically and personally. The confidence of the last show was a far cry from the initial nervousness that I'm sure we all felt a few weeks ago when we had our first rehearsal in Arkansas. We survived snow-storms, long drives, and nick-of-time arrivals, but the experiences and audiences were all worth it.

Oh, by the way, forgot to mention our fun times too, visiting sights in the East, like Colonial Williamsburg, malls in Maine, beautiful New Haven and Providence, went to some movies, and even a Boston Bruins game! Ate at some fine restaurants, pubs, and sweet shops, too (not to mention cotton candy and popcorn at some of the arenas we played at...)




The men of Cantus wish to express their sincerest thanks to the entire staff, crew, and musicians of the Boston Pops. We all had a wonderful time getting to know and work with you!

As we move into January, we welcome a new tenor (Eric Hopkins) to the fold for the second half of our '07-08 Season, and we look forward to telling you more about him soon.

Join us regularly here at http://cantustales.blogspot.com regularly. 2007 was extremely exciting for us, and 2008 should prove to be a lot of fun. Cheers.