A Rare Breed : The a cappella men’s choir Chanticleer is still one of a kind. The 12-man ensemble performs Sunday night at CSUN.

The continuing role of Chanticleer as the nation’s only full-time professionalclassical a cappella en semble is a source of pride and frustration for Joseph Jennings, the group’s music director.

After several years of teaching voice, piano and musical theater, he’d joined Chanticleer in 1983, intrigued by the Bay Area ensemble’s sophistication and broad repertoire.

“It was grown men doing it, grown men out of school,” he said. “So it was very exciting to hear. . . . It was like grown-up glee club. That was the feeling that it gave.”

His frustration comes from the general failure of similar full-time professional choirs to emerge during what Jennings thinks remains a dubious cultural climate. “When I was first coming along, and even now, groups like Chanticleer were very few and far between.” Today, “young singers can (usually) count on singing as a soloist in an ensemble part-time, and have a real job that pays the bills,” he added.

Jennings is one of the three countertenors in the 12-man ensemble, set to perform Sunday night at the Cal State Northridge University Student Union.

The group has managed to thrive for the last 15 years in part due to an eclectic repertoire.

Originally founded by a group of friends to sing early music, Chanticleer has since added pop, gospel, jazz, folk and barbershop music to its song list.

At CSUN, Chanticleer will perform a program that includes some English Renaissance music, excerpts from Adriano Banchieri’s “A Madrigal Comedy,” and compositions by Saint-Saens, along with several contemporary works.

It’s a typical mixture for the group, which the New York Times has called “a first-class ensemble--pure of tone and intonation, musically confident in the most difficult of music.”

That sound has been captured over the course of at least 10 albums, released both on Hamonia Mundi and the group’s own Chanticleer Records label.

Coming soon is a recording of classical music by Mexican composers Manuel de Sumaya and Ignacio de Jerusalem, and another of Gregorian chants.

But Chanticleer is also very active in the commissioning of new works. Just in the last few years, the ensemble has performed original music by talents as varied as its official 1990-91 composer-in-residence, David Jaffe; Anthony Davis, composer of the opera “X,” about Malcolm X, and wise-guy musicologist Peter Schickele, better-known as PDQ Bach.

“Sometimes they come to us, and sometimes we know their work,” Jennings said. “Our only requirement is that they write well for the voice.”

Chanticleer spends about 24 weeks a year on the road, stopping at venues across the United States, Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

And Jennings has been there for most of it, first only as a singer, and later also as an arranger.

When he first joined the group 10 years ago, he had expected to be gone only temporarily from his teaching job at College of the Siskiyous in Weed, Calif.

“I was actually going to do this for a year, just to try it out, because I was enjoying teaching very much,” he said.

But then came a tour to Africa he didn’t want to miss and, later, the invitation to become music director. He still plans to return to teaching, only . . . later. Jennings laughed. “I’m still kind of on my year’s leave of absence.”

WHERE AND WHEN

What: Chanticleer classical vocal ensemble at CSUN, University Student Union, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge.

Hours: 8 p.m. Sunday.

Price: $18 to $20 general admission, $14 to $16 students and senior citizens.

Call: (818) 885-3093.