A ‘Cleer Vision : Louis Botto’s All-Male A Cappella Ensemble, Chanticleer, Strives for Clarity, Precision

The word “chanticleer” may best be known as the name of a particularly vocal rooster in one of Chaucer’s more bawdy “Canterbury Tales.” But it also means “to sing clearly”--which was just the goal a San Francisco tenor named Louis Botto had in 1978 when he chose that name for a new choral group he had formed.

In the years since, the all-male a cappella ensemble has reaped international acclaim for that clarity, and for its vocal range (3 1/2 octaves from bass to countertenor), precision, stylistic authenticity and versatility in singing music from Renaissance to gospel. The 12-member group presents a Christmas program Sunday afternoon at the Anaheim United Methodist Church.

The 40-year-old Botto, who stopped performing about 18 months ago to concentrate on his duties as the group’s artistic director, created Chanticleer because he wanted to perform early and Renaissance music in a context other than what he terms the “cattle call” environment of larger choruses; he had previously sung with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys.

“My vision was that choral singers could produce music as sophisticated as that of chamber musicians,” he explained by phone from Chanticleer’s San Francisco office. “We lieder (German art-song) singers had all the knowledge and the instinct to make the music leap off the page. My question back then was--and still is--’How great can choral music get if you do it full time rather than as an avocation?’ ”

The group spent its early years performing around Northern California and began touring nationally in 1981. That same year they sang at the annual International Fortnight of Music Festival in Bruges, Belgium, a trip that eventually led to a recording contract with Harmonia Mundi and numerous other European engagements, including a 1987 appearance at the Salzburg Festival.

As Botto envisioned, Chanticleer has become the nation’s only choral group to offer its members full-time employment: a subscription series in San Francisco and three other Bay Area cities, and 15 weeks of annual touring, for a total of about 80 concerts a year plus in-school performances and demonstrations. When not on tour, they rehearse five days a week, three to six hours a day.

“We’re actually a pretty big business right now,” Botto said. “We have seven full-time staff people, and we do a fair amount of recording and commissioning.” Indeed, the group commissioned all but one of the selections on its November release, “With a Poet’s Eye,” and now records on its own Chanticleer Records label.

In concert, the ensemble combines musicianship with imaginative staging and explanatory, humor-laced remarks addressed to the audience. The performances are supervised by music director/countertenor Joseph Jennings, from his place within the ensemble.

“Though in rehearsal Joseph functions very much as a conductor, in concert he’ll just wave his hand and arm up and down from time to time,” Botto noted. “Not having a conductor, the singers focus on each other and on the audience--there’s a real audience contact.”

The Anaheim concert presents sacred and secular music that captures what the group feels is the true spirit of Christmas.

“We like to sing about the birth of Christ rather than ‘Jingle Bells’ or ‘Frosty the Snowman,’ ” Botto said. “For us, Christmas is the idea of the God that’s within each one of us and is born again each Christmas. Whether you want to call it God, or love, or whatever, we try to re-create that feeling with our concert.”

The program’s first half features Medieval and Renaissance selections, among them Gregorian chants, works by Dufay, Brumel and Jacob Handl, and anonymous Spanish pieces. The lighter post-intermission fare reflects the group’s preference for lesser-known carols and traditional carols in unusual arrangements. There will also be selections by Britten and Holst and a medley of spirituals arranged by Jennings.

That versatility has allowed Chanticleer to stand out from other male choruses.

“Our trademark is our colors,” Botto said. “One German reviewer called us ‘an orchestra of voices.’ We do many different styles and change the way we sing for each. . . . I think that’s an American quality--it’s easier to do because we have such a confluence of backgrounds here. I have the utmost respect and admiration for British choirs, but their sound is the same whatever they do.”

Looking ahead, in January the group will premiere a work called “Sun Songs and Nocturnes” at Avery Fisher Hall, written for them and symphony orchestra by composer John David Earnest. Later in the year, they will tour Taiwan and Singapore.

But what about that other, more ribald Chaucerian association the name Chanticleer evokes?

“Well,” Botto said with a laugh, “we’re not singing anything of that sort in our Christmas concert, of course. But we have a lot of fun with what we do, and there are some pretty bawdy numbers. We sing ‘Love for Sale’--you can’t get bawdier than that.”

* Chanticleer will perform a holiday concert of sacred and secular music at 4 p.m. Sunday at Anaheim United Methodist Church, 1000 S. State College Blvd., Anaheim. Tickets: $10. Information: (714) 535-5337.