St. Charles Singers — 'North American Mosaic'

Critically acclaimed mixed-voice chamber choir St. Charles Singers open their season with “North American Mosaic,” comprising songs of different eras and cultural perspectives from the U.S. and Canada. 

“The program paints a wide-ranging historical and cultural panorama through songs dating from early America to the present day,” says founder and music director Jeffrey Hunt.

He describes it as “a tapestry of American experience, with a respectful nod to Canada.”

“Gimikwenden Ina” (Do You Remember?) is from Canadian composer Corey Payette’s musical “Children of God,” about indigenous Oji-Cree children forced into boarding schools to erase their native culture and family connections. Payette is a member of the Mattagami First Nation. The St. Charles Singers will perform Elliot Vaughan’s arrangement for four-part choir with piano and drum.

It’s one of eight works on the program that the St. Charles Singers will be performing for the first time.

Another is “The Bird,” by early America’s William Billings, considered the country’s first professional choral composer. Written in 1790 and based on Psalm 11, the score includes Billings’ characteristic fugues, melisma, and tone painting.

New England’s pioneering American modernist composer Charles Ives wrote “The Circus Band” in 1894 while still a student a Yale University. It’s a humorous, nostalgic take on a young boy’s excitement at the chaos and exuberance of a passing circus parade.

William Dawson’s rhythmic arrangement of “Ain’-a That Good News” is a lively 1937 setting of a timeless, joyful Africa American spiritual.

Florence Price wrote both the music and text for “Resignation,” a quiet, poetic reflection on the physical and emotional trauma of slavery.

Aaron Copland’s “Old American Songs,” Book 1, published in 1950, were famously adapted for mixed-voice choir by Copland’s friend and colleague, composer Irving Fine. The songs are 19th-century folk, minstrel, and religious tunes Copland sourced from historic collections.

Composer, arranger, and singer Ysaye M. Barnwell is a former member of the African American female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock. In “We Are,” she extols the transcendent value of every human life and the interconnectedness of all people.

Concertgoers will hear Arnold Sevier’s celebrated 1996 arrangement of Thomas Dorsey’s 1930s gospel standard “Precious Lord.”

Brandon Williams’ stirring, 2022 a cappella arrangement of Daniel Iverson’s hymn “Spirit of the Living God” includes double soprano and bass parts for lush six-part harmonies.

Award-winning composer and choirmaster Craig Hella Johnson of Austin, Texas, says “Reaching” is about “cultural and spiritual separation and displacement as well as a soulful yearning to ‘come home’ to one another.”

Kile Smith’s “Northland,” from 2023, includes musical settings of four poems about the immigrant experience by Jamaica-born Harlem Renaissance writer Claude McKay: “The Tropics in New York,” “America,” “On Broadway,” and “To One Coming North.”