How Cantus chooses the music we sing

On Wednesday of this week, the artists of Cantus will be doing a little programming...choosing the music we will perform. In this case it will involve choosing music for our 2010-2011 Touring Program 'Before Us'. With this program, we will be using American music to show how people that have come before us have found their 'American Identity'. In this program, William Billings' (1746-1800) 'Lamentation over Boston' will be paired with 'Gravedigger' from Dave Matthews (of the Dave Matthews Band). But how does Cantus get those two pieces into the same program?

First, the Cantus artists brainstorm themes and stories that we want to explore: along with 'Before Us' for 2010-11, we've also selected the theme of 'On the Shoulders of Giants' for our 2011-12 Touring Program. That title is derived from Sir Isaac Newton's quotation 'If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants', an obvious homage to the great thinkers that came before him. To Cantus' end, that means masterworks for men's voices by master composers: Liszt, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and more. But that's only a first half; the second half will speak of a different type of 'giants'--larger-than-life personalities and folk heroes like Frankenstein, Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, and Goliath, just to name a few.

But I digress. After a theme has been chosen, we then bring our favorite music, old or new, classical or more popular, to a meeting. For a Cantus program, good music is good music, and if it fits our theme and better tells the story, it goes on the program, even if that means pairing William Billings with Dave Matthews. Typically, we begin with about 100 pieces for each theme, submitted by all the singers. All pieces are listened to or sung through by the whole ensemble, and then fun really begins: discussing, eliminating, re-arranging, choosing, and finally, selecting a suitable program order for the chosen pieces. I would estimate it takes us 4-5 hours of meeting time to put together a program we all love and are excited to sing. It is a time-consuming process, and might look a lot like how the U.S. Congress works, but it is an extremely important process. Inevitably, every single artist in the ensemble has a piece they suggested on the program, and as we sing a program every night, we see that person's tastes and artistic sensibilities on stage. It also gives each artist a greater 'buy-in' into the musical process and overall product, invaluable for an artist-led ensemble.

By the way, Cantus loves suggestions from fans and audience members, so if you have a favorite piece or poem that fits our program themes, let us know. Comment on this blog post with your suggestions.

It's Easy Bein' Green!

As we prepare to bring our Elemental program to the Twin Cities, we wanted to let everyone know the ways that Cantus strives to stay green as we tour, rehearse, and even create our CDs!

Biking or bussing to rehearsal is my usual M.O., along with refilling water bottles I acquire many times. My wife and I decided to remain a one-car family, choosing to live near a transit station when we relocated here from San Francisco (a very green town). Reusing is better than recycling, so if I can repurpose anything, I will: medicine bottles can become a flight-friendly hair gel container, and I haven't taken notes on a new sheet of paper in 5 years! -Gary

Here are testimonials from some of the other artists:

Aaron:

I ride my bicycle to the rehearsal and to the office as much as possible. We often use public transit to get downtown and always use public transit (Shahzore and I) to get the the airport for tour. I also volunteer for Transit for Livable Communities.

Shahzore and I also have a "Nature Mill" composting machine on the balcony of our condo. This machine can take up to 5 pounds of food and paper waste a day to make compost. Up to 25 pounds a week! It turns it into compost that we use in our herb garden in the spring and give to friends to fertilize their gardens.

We switched to GPS to avoid printing huge packets of paper directions.

On tour I carry my own water bottle and we've discussed getting "Cantus" bottles with our logo to use on stage.

You could also talk about gas mileage per person. We have 4 or 5 people in a minivan (usually) that gets about 21 MPG. So that's a pretty good per person mileage. It's taking 1 gallon of gas to transport 4 or 5 of us 21 miles-. Most commuters are getting that kind of mileage for one person.

Chris:

Sometimes I ride my bike when the weather is nice. And I use a stainless steel water bottle instead of plastic ones.

Tim:

Whenever I print off scores of my own pieces for the singers, I print them on the reverse side of used printing paper. When we get our scores, none of the pages looks the same! Some of them have holes punched in the wrong side, some will have one sheet of random resume paper, and some have copied magazine articles on the back. Furthermore, if we ever are done with a one-sided copied score (public domain, of course), meeting agenda, or board report, a

couple of us will collect the pages and just stick them on our personal printer trays at home.

Whenever we travel somewhere in the metro area, we carpool to the fullest extent. If you see two four-door sedans caravanning around with nine guys in them, you can bet it's Cantus!

"While You Are Alive," our latest studio album, used recycled packaging. The cardboard sleeve was post consumer content, we used soy-based inks, and the plastic tray for the disc was made out of 100% recycled pop bottles.

Last tour (Allied) Aaron insisted that we use the stow-n-go part of the minivans (under the floor) for recycling. We would throw cans, bottles, and other recyclables down there until we found an official collection bin at a performance site. Then we'd empty the van and start all over again.

Paul:

I do ride my bike to rehearsal when I can, but I guess the greenest thing I did when I moved here was start to live in a place near downtown so I could just walk to work. I've lived for over a year near Loring Park, which has allowed me to basically walk everywhere, and use public transportation for whenever I needed to get outside of my immediate vicinity.

We invite our audiences to join us in conserving, reusing, and recycling, both at the office and at home. Please also join us next Friday night at St. Olaf Catholic Church, downtown Minneapolis, or Sunday afternoon at St. Bartholomew's in Wayzata. Visit http://cantusonline.org/ for times and tickets.

See you there!