Saint John’s Abbey
College of Saint Benedict / Saint John’s University
Saint John’s Preparatory School
Saint Benedict’s Monastery Sesquicentennial
Benedictines in Central Minnesota — 150 Years

To learn more about Cantus, visit www.cantusonline.com.

Left to right: Michael Hanawalt Executive Director Cantus; Eric Ewazen Composer; S. Delores Dufner, O.S.B Librettist; Anna Thompson, Executive Director Fine Arts Programming-CSB/SJU; and Erick Lichte, Artistic Director of Cantus.

Premiere of "Listen!"

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. – Fine Arts Programming at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University presents Cantus at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 6 at the Stephen B. Humphrey Theater, on the SJU campus.

Cantus, the resident artists at St. John's University, will be performing an All-American program highlighted by the premiere of Listen!, a piece commissioned by Saint John’s University with arrangement by composer Eric Ewazen and text by S. Delores Dufner, OSB.  This piece is based on the Rule of Saint Benedict and celebrates the 150^th Anniversary of the Benedictine Communities of Saint John’s Abbey-Collegeville, Minnesota and the Sisters of Saint Benedict-Saint Joseph, Minnesota.  For more information about the Sesquicentennial celebrations, visit www.csbsju.edu/150. 

Cantus is a full time professional male vocal chamber ensemble dedicated to exalting the human spirit through the performance of innovative and engaging musical programs. The ensemble seeks not only to sing the finest literature of the past but also to present new music either created by its members or commissioned for the group. Cantus reaches its audience through concerts, recordings, clinics and by making new musical scores available. In addition to performing, Cantus champions male choral singing and encourages people of all ages to sing.

Gaining recognition as one of America's finest professional male vocal ensembles, Cantus enjoys a vigorous schedule of national tours, subscription concerts in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, several innovative residencies and outreach programs, and recording. The Washington Post called the singers' sound "beaming and elastic" and referred to their music-making as "spontaneous grace." Stereophile Magazine declared: "the sheer beauty of the unaccompanied male voices (and the) art of (these) professional singers proved overwhelming."

Eric Ewazen has been a faculty member at Juilliard since 1980 and has received numerous composition awards and prizes.  His works have been commissioned and performed by many soloists, chamber ensembles, and orchestras in the U.S. and overseas.  He has been lecturer for the New York Philharmonic’s Musical Encounters Series, Vice-President of the League of Composers—International Society of Contemporary Music, and Composer-in-Residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City.  Recent works include Legacy, commissioned for the Bi-Centennial of West Point and performed by the USMA Band in Carnegie Hall and Flight, commissioned by the USAF Heritage of America Band at Langley AFB, VA, celebrating the 100^th anniversary of powered flight.  Recent premieres of his Orchestral and Wind Ensemble works have been given by the Charleston (SC) Symphony, West Virginia Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica de Tenerife in Spain, Orquesta Sinfonica Carlos Chavez in Mexico City, Orchestre de la Garde Republicaine in Paris, the Jeju Music Festival Wind Ensemble in Korea and the Moment Musicale Orchestra of Taiwan.

S. Delores Dufner, OSB, is a member of St. Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, a Benedictine women’s community of about 320 members.  Sister Delores holds Master's Degrees in Liturgical Music and Liturgical Studies.  She is an active member of, and occasional presenter for, The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, and the Benedictine Musicians of the Americas. Sister Delores was full-time director of the Office of Worship for the Diocese of St. Cloud, Minnesota from 1979-1989. She subsequently worked as a liturgical music consultant for the Diocese of Ballarat, Victoria in southeast Australia for fifteen months.  Since then she has been writing hymn and motet texts which have a broad ecumenical appeal and are contracted or licensed by 34 publishers in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia.  In 1994 Sing a New Church, a collection of forty-eight of her hymn texts set to public domain melodies, was published by Oregon Catholic Press. In March 2004 an anthology of seventy-nine of her hymns, The Glimmer of Glory in Song, became available from GIA Publications.

The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University are two nationally-leading liberal arts colleges whose unique partnership provides students with a highly engaged and integrated learning experience preparing them for leadership and service in a global society. The student experience is enlivened by Catholic and Benedictine tradition and an extraordinary sense of place and community challenge students to live balanced lives of learning, work, leadership and service in a changing world.

Contact:  Leslie Hanlon
CSB/SJU Fine Arts Programming
320-363-5311; lhanlon@csbsju.edu