Review: Cantus beautifully mixes poetry and song in its Twin Cities ‘Christmas With Cantus’ concerts

Come Christmas, the Twin Cities-based low-voiced octet Cantus usually is in a storytelling mood. This year, the stories are short and particularly pithy.

For the 2024 incarnation of its itinerant and very popular “Christmas With Cantus” concerts, the group has chosen poetry as its preferred interstitial art form, building off the English “Lessons and Carols” tradition. But the blend of words and music has seldom achieved such heights as could be experienced at Thursday’s launch of its nine-venue (mostly) Twin Cities tour at Minneapolis’ Westminster Hall.

Poet Chris Santiago has curated a captivating collection of colorful poems, each dropping listeners into the middle of a memory of a holiday celebration or a particular bond forged within a family. The poetry proves an ideal complement to the almost all a cappella program of 15 songs that range in vintage from the reverent sacred sounds of 12th-century composer Hildegard of Bingen to the 21st-century folk rock of Sara Bareilles.

For those seeking calm at the end of a tumultuous year, you can find it in Saunder Choi’s epic arrangement of “Angels We Have Heard on High” or a mesmerizing version of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” sung in German and accompanied by the haunting tones of fingers rubbing the rims of water glasses. And, if it’s swing you seek, it can be found in Reginald Bowens’ jazzy take on “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”

The arranging skills of Cantus’ members are improving by the year, and this program provides a fine showcase for them. Tenor Alexander Nishibun not only created that haunting “Lo, How a Rose,” but contributes an original composition, a setting of Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Oxen,” on which first tenor Paul Scholtz soars in spine-tingling fashion.

Bass Chris Foss contributes two of the most intriguing arrangements in a kaleidoscopically layered “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and a richly reverent version of Hildegard’s “O Frondens Virga.” And tenor Jacob Christopher is responsible for the group’s lovely takes on Bareilles’ “Love Is Christmas” and “Feed the Birds” from “Mary Poppins,” which concluded with a raptor swooping outside Westminster Hall’s floor-to-ceiling windows behind the stage.

Each half of the concert ended with something that shone a lovely spotlight on the group’s harmonic artistry. First came the piece that inspired a group of St. Olaf College students to form Cantus in the first place, Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria.” If that represented the past, then a bright future could be glimpsed in the program-closing “We Toast the Days” by Twin Cities composer Linda Kachelmeier, who may have created a 21st-century “Auld Lang Syne,” a beautiful ballad that deserves to become a standard of the season.

When and where: 7 p.m. Fri., Zumbro Lutheran Church, 624 3rd Av. SW., Rochester; 7:30 p.m. Sat., Capri Theater, 2027 W. Broadway, Mpls.; 3 p.m. Sun., St. Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church, 17205 County Road 6, Plymouth; 7:30 p.m. Mon., Hamline Church, 1514 Englewood Av., St. Paul; 11 a.m. Tue., Meetinghouse Church, 6200 Colonial Way, Edina; 7:30 p.m. Dec. 19, Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas, Cleveland and Ashland avenues, St. Paul; 7:30 p.m. Dec. 20, Ordway Concert Hall, 345 Washington St., St. Paul; 3:30 p.m. Dec. 21, Westminster Hall, Nicollet Mall and Alice Rainville Place, Mpls.; 3 p.m. Dec. 22, Trinity Lutheran Church, 115 N. 4th St., Stillwater.

Tickets: $5-$65, 612-435-0046 or cantussings.org.

Note: Thursday’s concert will be available for streaming through Jan. 2 at cantussings.org.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com