Well, there was certainly one very nice reaction to our performance the other day! Peter Jacobi reviews for the Bloomington Herald-Times. He tends to write rather dry, factual reviews, rather than actually comment on the performance, so I take what little he said as high praise:

Vocal balm for the ears
By Peter Jacobi H-T Reviewer
August 2, 2007

On Tuesday morning, in preparation for next Sunday’s “Show Times” section, I took note of, with regret, the dearth of choral music during the summer season, happy then in being able to point to a partially compensating IU Chamber Choir concert this coming Monday.

So, what happened a few hours later, on Tuesday evening? As if responding to my initial regret, the Early Music Institute’s Concentus program in Auer Hall turned out to feature, among other items, three choral numbers sung by a beautifully voiced ensemble of 11.

What one heard was balm for the ears. First, the group offered Claudio Monteverdi’s “Cor mio, non mori?” (“My heart, are you not dying?”), a madrigal and delectable expression of longing for a love now moving in but a single direction. How starkly different was Carlo Gesualdo’s intense, often dissonant, setting for the Lamentations of Jeremiah, in which — under the guidance of director Timothy Chenette — the choristers delivered a carefully stitched, incantatory weave of
time-spanning chant. [We chanted a few verses of the Lamentations in between the responsories to give some context.]

Still to come at program’s end were the “Litanies de la Vierge,” by the 17th-century French composer Henry Du Mont, a churning plea for mercy from the Holy Trinity, but mostly also from the Virgin Mary, whom the text addresses with a flourishing array of praise and the music apostrophizes in accord. The Concentus singers, with William Hudson leading them, infused their reading with commendable intonation and a strong sense for meaning.



...Nothing like "commendable intonation" as a compliment. The review goes on to talk about the instrumental portions of the concert in essentially factual terms, which seems appropriate: the "beautifully voiced" (whatever that means) "ensemble of 11" performed by far the most substantial music on the concert. Still, everyone did well and it was really fun all around.