BY JASON E. WEBER weberj@marietta.edu

Since 1980, Marietta College has been visited by lecturer, performing artists, and other professionals in the humanities as part of a program endowed by the Frederica G. Esbenshade Memorial Fund. This year's Esbenshade Series will hold its first event for the Marietta community on Tuesday, October 18, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Mary's Catholic Church. Performing will be a nationally renowned male vocal ensemble, Cantus. Since their humble beginnings as a small college ensemble at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, Cantus has become one of the finest professional vocal ensembles in the country. Over the past ten years the group has performed over 300 concerts in nearly just as many cities. Their coast to coast tours have gained them recognition in numerous major venues such as Nashville, Austin, San Francisco, and St. Louis. Two years ago, the ensemble went international and performed at the Polyfolia Festival in France.

The ensemble, made up of nine men from varying geographical backgrounds, come together to sing an even more varying repertoire. Their material is pulled from the baroque period to today and everywhere in between. They have been known to sing Gregorian chant, a pop song, and a spiritual in the same concert. The range is truly impressive and has inspired many composers, such as Kenneth Jennings, Peter Hamlin, and Edie Hill, to accept commissions to write songs especially for this group. As with other Esbenshade performers, their main mission as an ensemble is to educate young men and women in the art of choral performance, and to encourage them to take part in an ensemble of their own to learn what it means to perform. Many of the singers themselves studied music in college and all of them have at least undergraduate degrees if not higher.

“What they do is enchanting.” Said Lindsay Koob of International Record Review as quoted on the Cantus website, “The singers produce a wonderfully warm, gutsy and masculine sound as well as a kind of smooth delivery, overt emotionality, and uncanny sense of ensemble. [They have] a certain gusto, a sense of boundless joy in music making. They achieve amazing precision, balance and interpretive unity. Male chorus fans are in for rare and enchanting treats here.”

The concert will be free of charge and open to the entire Marietta community. The singing begins at 7:30 p.m. at St. Mary's Catholic Church on the corner of Fourth and Wooster Streets. For more information about the group, visit their website: www.cantusonline. org, or for specific information about their performance in Marietta or any other Esbenshade event email Dr. Monek, Esbenshade Coordinator, at monekd@marietta.edu.