In the words of Erick Lichte, bass and a founding member of the choral ensemble Cantus, there is a need for art in the world, and every artist responds by creating their unique view of the world in art. In the Cantus sphere of creation, art and the world come together in the universal language of music. The ensemble group consists of ten twenty-something all-American boys with a sincere desire to “exalt the human spirit,” along with the inventive, entrepreneurial ability they need to stay on the stage and keep their group viable.
Born out of a pure love of singing and college camaraderie, Cantus has surprised its founding members by acquiring a life of its own in the past three years. A male choral ensemble based on the principles of Bel Canto singing, it has become a full-time singing job for its membe-medical benefits included. Cantus members forego graduate programs and opera workshops in favor of fully paid time to sing, explore new repertoire,, travel with friends, and be on the stage at least a hundred times a year. The Cantus choice has taken its members on a thrilling, unexpected journey. Tenor Brian Arreola, the ensemble’s director of singer recruitment as well as a member of its artistic committee, discusses the Cantus phenomenon in the following interview.
How did you get started?
Four friends and classmates-Erick Lichte, Albert Jordan, Kjell Stenberg and I-were finishing up our first year at St. Olaf College. We had been singing in the male chorus and really liked the unique sound of male voices together, so that gave us the idea to get together on Saturdays and continue singing as a group.
Were you all soloists at that time?
Three of us were. The interesting aspect was that we were also cellists and had a lot of high school experience with chamber music, string quartets and piano trios. That is how the idea of making choral music as chamber music developed.
When did you begin recruiting new members?
Very shortly afterwards, because we really wanted to sing the Franz Biebl “Ave Maria,” which has seven parts, so we needed to find three other guys.
When you started on this path, especially the voice majors, did you think it would be easier to have a career as a group rather than alone?
When we started, we had no idea that it could become a career. We just wanted to be able to sing that “Ave Maria” on a student recital. After that, we received compliments and encouragement, so we did some more recitals. Eventually, we started doing concerts on campus with an audience that grew to a thousand people per concert. But we still had no intention of making it our career, even when the original members graduated in 1998. That summer, however, we went on our first tour. A former member, Phillip Moody, contacted churches and civic music organizations all up and down the East Coast and asked, “Can we come do a concert there?”
How did you finance this first tour?
Actually…miracle of miracles! Not only did the tour pay for itself, but we actually managed to pay ourselves approximately $2,000 per person from it! A tour of six weeks with eleven singers and one tour manager in a fifteen-passenger van, performing all up and down the East Coast. A great summer job_better than flipping burgers! At the end, we arrived in Princeton, New Jersey, where we recorded a CD of the tour music, and we decided to make this our full-time job once the youngest members graduated.
So, those churches and venues on the first tour hired you without even hearing you?
In a lot of cases they did. Phil Moody sent our previously recorded CDs to some of them, especially for the music series-we were on the Newport Music Festival series, the big event on that tour. But a lot of them just hired us without having heard us.
How did you advertise in this first tour?
The advertising was really left to the presenter on site.
What happened next?
The youngest members had two more years to graduate, enough time for us to get the business structure of the ensemble established, so that we could hit the ground running in the summer of 2000. During that time our performing activity was limited to what a college student’s schedule could handle.
What did this process of structuring the ensemble as a business consist of?
It involved a lot of paperwork being filed with the government to make us a non-profit corporation. We developed our board of directors, consisting primarily of mentor figures from our musical past.
The non-profit status-did anyone advise you on how to achieve that?
We were fortunate enough that one of our board members is a lawyer, and he did the filing for us, pro bono.
Why did you need a board of directors?
If you want to become non-profit, you are required to have a board of directors.
What advantages does being non-profit entail?
Mainly tax advantages. We can also accept donations, raise funds, and receive grants for educational outreach.
Do you do any fundraising?
Right now up to ninety-five percent of our revenue comes from concerts and selling CDs. But, yes, the next step would be for us to go into fundraising.
Do you have salaries?
Yes, the money we earn goes into a fund, and salaries are paid out from there.
What about your CDs? How do you sell them?
We usually sell at concerts, but the selling of CDs has been an uphill battle for us.
Why?
Well, without being on a major label, it is difficult to get stores to carry the CDs. We are currently working with a group called “Collegium.” They’re trying to get national distribution for these independently produced CDs in Sam Goody and Borders.
How did you become managed?
We were doing a concert on the East Coast, and representatives from Herbert Barrett Management came to see us at the suggestion of a former Chanticleer [male choir] member. They enjoyed it and decided to sign us right there.
Once you became managed, how did things get easier?
Management has given certain credibility to the ensemble in the eyes of the presenters, as a viable artistic product that could be counted on. Most presenters can’t even propose booking an ensemble to their board of directors unless it has management. We had been in situations where some enthusiastic person on the board of an arts series said, “Oh, we would love to have you,” but their board would say, “I’m sorry, they are not managed; we canÕt take that large a risk” on what is essentially an unknown, untried musical act.
Doesn’t your management find venues for you to perform?
Oh, yes. They did a great deal of booking for us, and in fact, now we basically give them a block of touring dates throughout the year and they fill it for us.
What percentage do they get from you?
I believe it’s twenty percent.
Tell me about your repertoire.
Now that we are a full-time touring ensemble, our repertoire is very diverse. When we started, like a lot of choral ensembles, we did a lot of earlier music, but that music really suited neither the kind of vocalism that we wanted to do every day nor the personality of the ensemble. We focus on a lot of Romantic, twentieth century and modern repertoire.
How would you describe the personality of Cantus as an ensemble?
Engaging, dynamic, and unique. We tend to go for a style of performing that stresses engagement with the audience and displays an operatic or recitalist’s vocal energy, as opposed to most choral ensembles where the emphasis is on a blended sound mostly free of vibrato. We sing with what most people would describe as an operatic vocal production.
Is there any staging or choreography involved in performance?
We deliver pieces just as a string quartet would, not directly to the audience, but within a small semicircle, including the audience in the other half of that circle. When violinists in string quartets have solos, they play them to the other players and let the audience observe. Sometimes we deliver pieces straight to the audience, depending on the repertoire. Then we have pieces such as “Insalata Italiana” (Italian Salad) by Richard Genée, staged as a parody of Italian opera. One of us plays the soloist who intimidates the chorus and the orchestra, someone else plays the conductor, and the two have a power struggle. There is quite a bit of stage work in that. We are also doing a premiere in our next concert of a piece that is a setting of Thayer’s poem “Casey at the Bat.” That is entirely staged with a pitcher, batters, cheering fans, and a catcher. The setting is by Peter Hamlin, an original composition on this text.
Where do you get your musical ideas, and who does the arrangements for you?
We have an artistic committee and a programmer responsible for researching all the male choral music they can get their hands on. Because choral music pieces tend to be shorter, it is difficult to create a two-hour program based on only one style, sentiment or theme. So, our programmer, Erick Lichte, creates programs divided into quarters and each of those quarters has some kind of narrative arc or theme. We have also rewritten pieces intended for full chorus. Finding new repertoire is Erick’s specialty. He digs through stacks of male chorus works in libraries and calls music publishers. He and I read through the music, since I play piano, and we make massive piles of repertoire from all different periods, which he then turns into programs with the help of the artistic committee. Approximately half of us write or arrange for the group.
You mainly sing a cappella . Do you ever have instruments accompany you?
I would say that ninety-five percent of our performing is a cappella. On our current tour, we’ve actually been using piano, guitar, and a cello on different pieces. I play piano and cello and Alan Dunbar plays guitar. The audience appreciates the timbre change.
Do you sing while you play?
When I play the piano or cello, I don’t sing at the same time, but Alan does while he plays the guitar in a piece he arranged: “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a 1976 hit by the Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot. It’s about a ship that went down in the Great Lakes.
Do you have a lot of solo parts?
Quite a few. Usually, in the course of any given concert, about half of us sing a solo.
Your website, www.cantusonline.org, says the group has no music director or conductor; it is a true chamber ensemble, and the rehearsal process is a great illustration of that. How do you rehearse?
Each piece that we perform is assigned a producer, any member of the ensemble who feels they have a particular enthusiasm or aptitude for the given piece. The producer studies the piece in depth before the first rehearsal, in terms of the style, the language and musical structure issues. In many cases, he will assign parts-first and second tenor or solos. Basically, the producer serves to facilitate the chamber music-making process. He makes sure that all opinions are heard. We also use him as a last vote, so that if we ever come to an impasse, it doesn’t have to come down to actually fighting.
Speaking of fighting, how do all of you manage to get along in general, spending so much time with one another and having different ideas?
You know, there are some string quartets that are known for not even being able to fly together on the same plane! What they do in the chamber music-making process is so incredibly intense that they just can’t handle interacting with each other on other levels. We are based on a string quartet, theoretically, but since we are a lot larger, it never gets that bad. However, having this many members can make the process less efficient. That is why we have this producer system, where if we come to a dead end in our decision making, we’ll just say, “OK, what does the producer want? That’s the way we’ll sing it tonight.”
How else do you keep everyone together?
It does help that a large number-about eight of us-went to school together. We have many long-standing friendships in the group steeped in the trust that comes from singing with somebody since you were an eighteen or nineteen-year-old freshman. There is a great deal of understanding of how to tread lightly around your colleagues, how to nurture them, how to get them riled up if they need that…The tours are like fun road trips with our buddies, except it’s our job. We play pranks on one another; we play a lot of basketball and Frisbee. When people find out how long we have been together, they say, “Wow, and you guys still can stand each other?” I would credit that to the fact that we do a lot of different things together besides singing and traveling. Right now we are in Chicago, and we are going to a Cubs game. We really enjoy spending time together; we have a lot of diverse interests, and everyone brings something different to the table.
Do you help each other with technical/vocal issues?
We’ve been a little careful, as most classical singers are, to not address vocal production issues between ourselves. It’s kind of an unspoken rule-although in some circles; it is actually much more spoken-that you don’t talk about vocal production with your colleagues. One of the ways that we’ve gotten around that is, recently, we’ve started to require that all of our singers study voice when we are home in the Twin Cities.
Do you actually have the time to continue studying voice?
We do. It usually works out to about two voice lessons a month, which is not as much as some of us would like. It serves as maintenance, although in the summer, we do get a lot more study done because we are not on the road as much.
When you warm up for a performance, do you do that individually or as a group?
Everyone vocalizes on their own, usually in some isolated stairwell where you don’t hear other people. We feel it is really important to vocalize on our own, so that the muscle memory can come back, and all the feedback we’re getting in our ear is just our own sound, so that we can each monitor what we are doing.
I notice you are holding auditions now to replace members. Why do singers quit the ensemble?
Originally, the most members we lost were people for whom Cantus had just been a really fun thing to do in college with all of their friends. A number of guys needed to do more grad school in a different field. We had an actor who wanted to move to L.A…. But in more recent years, we’ve been losing people to the need to have a more stable career and lifestyle. One baritone who left us this January is married. He would like to have children in the next few years and be with his family all the time. That is problematic when you’re out touring every other week of the month.
How do you see that? Maintaining a stable family life with your schedule?
We are committed to the idea of being a family-friendly corporation. However, the lifestyle is inherently difficult for people who would like to be parents. We don’t have any Cantus babies yet, but it probably isn’t too far off in the future. Two baritones are getting married this summer, but they are both planning on continuing next year… Our schedule is tough on families and relationships in that sense…In September, we spend five days a week, five hours a day rehearsing in Minneapolis. We use that time to develop all the music that we are going to sing for the year. In October, we hit the road. Between October and May, we try to spend two weeks of each of those months touring. We do as many as ten or eleven concerts in a two-week period.
I noticed that members also have fixed responsibilities. How do you delegate them? Is it based on talent to handle a certain issue?
Yes. Those are the administrative positions. Our executive director, Michael Hanawalt, is actually one of the youngest members of the group, and we voted him to that position because he has a very entrepreneurial spirit, he is great with numbers, and we felt very comfortable with him being in charge of the money. The graphic design person, Tim Takach, was an art major as well as a composition major at St. Olaf College. He does all the artwork for the CDs, the posters and season brochures.
Do you do a lot of you own marketing for the CDs?
Yes. But now we’ve actually hired a publicist who does all our publicity for the Twin Cities. He has his own marketing company.
Did any one of you give up his aspirations for a solo career to join Cantus?
Well…the way we see it is that Cantus is probably a good stepping-stone between your undergraduate or graduate vocal studies and the next step, whatever that may be: Young Artists programs or hitting the audition circuit. It is a really good way for a young performer to get a lot of time on stage. However, it is not experience in an actual operatic role; it’s more like doing recitals, in which you are fully responsible for the characterization and vocalization that you are presenting on stage. We do eighty to ninety concerts a year, and it is very valuable experience just to be singing every day, to be in contact with audiences, and to learn a lot of diverse repertoire. There are approximately half a dozen members of Cantus who foresee themselves being in an operatic career in the future.
Is there a concern that in the future, when you decide to pursue a solo career and audition for various agents, you might be seen as a chorus singer, because of your Cantus work, and not actually be taken seriously as a soloist?
Good question…I don’t think any of us has actually raised that concern yet. I would imagine that at that point our résumé would be interesting enough. We are trying to free our summers almost entirely, to either tour every other summer or only two weeks of a given summer, letting our singers go and do opera programs to build up their résumés.
Going back to technique and vocal health, all of you are very young, some especially so… I would imagine that this intense performance schedule as well as being away from the comfort and control of your voice teachers can prove tricky and lead into bad habits, if you are not very careful. Is there a concern about that?
Yes. That’s a special concern for our newest members. When you join this ensemble, it’s usually quite a shock for you as a performer because we are constantly telling our singers: “Don’t try to blend. Sing with your voice, put it out there, just like an equal part.” Some of our members have actually suffered a bit of laryngitis in the beginning, or even lost their voice for a few days because they’ve been singing so hard to keep up with the rest of the ensemble. We try to help each other to monitor our vocal health, to get enough sleep, to stay well hydrated, to keep in shape…The worst part of all is probably being away from a teacher. We found that when you start to get into bad habits, instead of being able to break out of them, they tend to reinforce themselves over the course of a tour.
How do you conduct auditions for new singers?
We ask for a CD or tape. Then, we decide whether to hear someone in person. Audition information can be found on our website.
Why do you ask for vocalises on the audition tape, besides the contrasting pieces?
We believe it is very telling to see what a singer picks as their favorite vocalise. It shows us not only the best aspects of their timbre, range, and flexibility among other things, but also how they feel about their singing.
When you started out, what were your dreams, and how does the present fit in with your aspirations?
Well, about half of us still dream of being opera singers. Cantus is almost a bittersweet proposition for us. We enjoy doing it and feel very strongly about its mission to encourage not only young men, but people of all ages to do more singing and develop a culture of singing in this country. But sooner or later, we’re going to have to leave this to pursue our dreams, and that will be hard, because Cantus is a very potent way to spread singing. Students of all ages, even as young as grade school, respond very positively to us, because we’re just young enough that we seem like their cool older brothers, doing this “classical singing thing.” It makes it very accessible to them.
So, you perform in schools as well…
We do a great deal of musical education outreach. We actually did a little calculation last year and found that we have sung for over ten thousand children…Our school programs consist of “a trip around the world”-folk music from almost every culture imaginable: Chinese, Finnish, African, etc.
One of the great things about choral tradition is that folk music has always been a very strong element in the repertoire. We perform these songs in the original language. Of course, we briefly introduce the piece and culture to the children. If we’re in a classroom where we can use a globe, we have a child come up and point to the song’s country of origin.
Due to the all-pervasive power of our pop culture, most children aren’t even aware that other cultures have different music, so this is exposure is great for them. We want to develop a stronger presence as educators, especially in the Twin Cities, not only because we enjoy it, but it’s one of the areas where we can make a big impact. We also have a home concert series. A special event is the Christmas concert in an actual barn. We take the audience on sleigh rides, sing for them, and have them sing along with us. People love it. Then we have a themed concert in the spring. This year, our theme is “Magic, Myth, and Legend.” We’ve commissioned works from different composers on texts by J.R.R. Tolkien; we have the “Casey at the Bat” piece as an American legend, and a set of pieces from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Next year we are adding a concert in collaboration with another performing artist.
When you commission works, how do you get in touch with composers?
In the beginning, we would just ask composers we knew from our college days. The former director of the St. Olaf Choir, and former professor, Ken Jennings, wrote a number of incredible pieces for us pro bono. He has done a setting of the Finnish epic “The Kalevala,” which we commissioned as a piece for a larger chorus and Cantus as a small chorus, so that we could perform that in our educational outreach with a group of students. Recently, we’ve been collaborating with a non-profit organization in Minnesota called “The American Composers Forum.” They pair performing ensembles with composers and help procure grant money to pay the composers to write for the different performing ensembles.
This summer you traveled to Europe…
Yes, our first trip to Europe! We went to Normandy, France in early July.
How do you feel about what you have accomplished in three years? Is this a surprise for you, for all of you?
I think all of us are amazed, as far as the form our singing career has taken. I never imagined, going into college, that by continuing these fun singing get-togethers, I would be able to help found an ensemble that would become one of two professional singing groups in the country to provide full-time employment for singers. It is definitely a surprise!
