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The GRAMMY Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer returns to the St. James Music Series with Our American Journey, a program that explores the many voices, traditions, and histories that have shaped music in America.This remarkable program moves across centuries and styles, from early sacred music in colonial Mexico by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla and Juan de Lienas, to early American hymnody and shape-note singing by William Billings, Alexander Johnson, and W.E. Glanton. It also includes spirituals such as There Is a Balm in Gilead and Wade in the Water, alongside Brent Michael Davids’ powerful The Un-Covered Wagon, a work that challenges familiar narratives of westward expansion through an Indigenous lens.
The second half of the concert journeys through American choral music of the 20th and 21st centuries, with works by Virgil Thomson, Randall Thompson, Ayanna Woods, Chen Yi, and Toby Twining. The program concludes with selections from American folk, popular, and vernacular traditions, with repertoire drawn from titles such as Blue Skies, If I Had a Hammer, I’ll Fly Away, Home, and more.
This season’s program revisits Chanticleer’s landmark 2002 album Our American Journey, which was inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2025. Under the direction of Tim Keeler, the program reflects on America’s musical inheritance in all its richness, tension, beauty, and variety.
Known around the world for its dazzling virtuosity, expressive range, and signature blend, Chanticleer has long been celebrated as an “orchestra of voices.” This is a chance to hear one of the world’s finest vocal ensembles in the warm, resonant acoustic of St. James by-the-Sea.
Join us for an unforgettable afternoon of music that is searching, brilliant, and deeply human.
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Event Venue
743 Prospect St., La Jolla, CA, United States, California 92037
Tickets
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