Singers in fast-rising choral group harmonize in their own way

By Fred Crafts
From The Register-Guard

GET A GROUP of musical guys together, and chances are they will start singing. Get guys into a singing group like Cantus, and you can bet they will sing their way to the top.

Cantus, a 12-man ensemble from Minneapolis, has been making waves in the choral music world ever since its members appeared on the scene in 1995 as students at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn.

Since then, the students have graduated and made singing their careers. They have given more than 170 concerts across the nation, including performances at AmericaFest, the American Choral Directors Association's National Convention and the Newport Music Festival.

This year, they are under the wing of the Herbert Barrett Management team, which has scheduled them for 80 concerts in this season alone. Ahead are engagements at AmericaFest and the World Choral Symposium in Minneapolis, among others.

Cantus will sing at the Oregon Bach Festival at 8 p.m. Friday in Beall Concert Hall at the University of Oregon School of Music. Before that, the ensemble will perform as guest artists in a concert by the Youth Choral Academy at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Silva Concert Hall.

One Cantus member familiar with those venues is baritone Adam Reinwald, who grew up in Eugene (Sheldon High School Class of 1996) and sang on those stages in the Oregon Children's Choir Association's Young Men's Ensemble.

Reinwald, 23, is eager to show his hometown what this chorus can do with a program of classical, folk and popular songs. Concertgoers will hear what Reinwald describes as "a very aggressive sound."

"There are a few professional ensembles that have a very delicate sound, a very refined sound, where pitch is perfect and everything sounds very together and very neat; we have a style that is very not-neat. It's kind of bull in a China shop every once in a while."

But that, Reinwald says, is the ensemble's intention.

"We feel that being raucous in our singing is very human and very natural. We appreciate the nuance of many ensembles, but we also see there is a need to be a true bel canto singer and let the voice happen.

"It manifests in a very aggressive - oftentimes a louder - sound than sometimes you hear."

The Cantus "sound" sprang naturally from its original four members, three of whom also were cellists and accustomed to playing in conductor-less string quartets.

Cantus still doesn't have a conductor.

"We feed off each other," Reinwald says. "We look at each other to understand tempo, phrasing, dynamics and intensity in certain areas.

"For each song, we have what's called a `producer,' who takes the song from the beginning through performance and helps guide the collaborative process."

The act of singing without a conductor not only makes the singers squarely responsible for their parts, but also encourages them to sing like soloists.

"It allows you have your own interpretation of the piece but be mindful that you are singing in an ensemble and there are certain rules that need to be followed: pitch, rhythm, vowel unification, things like that," Reinwald says.

Allowing choir members to sing like soloists is "something that we've found to be rather novel in the choral world," Reinwald says. "We feel as though we're starting a little bit of a trend in the choral world."

Cantus began as a foursome, but its original members wanted to sing Franz Beible's haunting "Ave Maria," a seven-part composition. The group expanded, eventually reaching a dozen men, all of them schoolmates.

In the summer of 1998, Cantus made its first tour: 12 guys jammed into a single van for six weeks.

"It was very tight," Reinwald recalls, "but it lit the fire for our professional career that started in 2000."

After appearing this week at the Oregon Bach Festival, Cantus will sing around the United States and Canada, then compete in the International Choral Festival in Spain. It could do very well there, if past reviewers are to be believed.

Ronald Broun of The Washington Post said: "Cantus's sonic blend was so beaming and elastic that it seemed to originate as a single, gorgeously variegated voice." Composer Bob Chilcott, himself a former King's Singer, said, "If anything can make choral singing irresistible and indispensable, this group can."

In the choral world, Cantus is the new kid on the block. Reinwald says the San Francisco ensemble Chanticleer is "the standard of professional ensemble we hope to achieve." However, the groups are very different in their sound and the way they approach music.

"They use sopranos and altos - males singing in the falsetto range," he says. "It's a very thin sound. It's very, very perfect. We don't consider it much of a true sound. Falsetto is Italian for false voice. We are a tenor-tenor-bass-bass ensemble.

"They are very, very good at what they do, and we like to think of ourselves as good at what we do also."

Arts reporter Fred Crafts can be reached by phone at 541/338-2575 and by e-mail at fcrafts@guardnet.com.