CHANTICLEER CLAUS IS COMIN’ TO TOWN

The boys are celebrating their new album
that rings, glows, and absolutely delivers

The GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer rings in the season with Joy to the World, its luminous new Christmas album and first release on Delos, now available on CD and streaming worldwide. An elegant, glowing companion for the season and a showcase for Chanticleer at its most versatile and inspired. Music Director Tim Keeler frames the recording around one of the group’s core strengths: the way Chanticleer makes centuries-old repertoire feel alive beside newly minted works, treating the whole sweep of Christmas music as a living tradition rather than a museum. The radiant album is a stunner—immaculately sung, stylistically fearless, and full of the crystalline sonorities that have made the ensemble an American institution for nearly five decades.

photo by Stephen K Mack

To mark the release, Chanticleer takes Joy to the World on an extensive 2025 holiday tour, from the East Coast to California, with notable stops at St. Ignatius Loyola in New York (Dec 5 & 7), NJPAC in Newark (Dec 6), Chicago’s Symphony Center (Dec 9), Stanford’s Memorial Church (Dec 11), Oakland’s Cathedral of Christ the Light (Dec 13), Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (Dec 15), and more, plus the California homes where the ensemble’s sound was shaped—Berkeley, Sacramento, Carmel, and San Francisco.

photo by Joel Simon

Keeler describes the album as a meeting point between the familiar and the freshly imagined—where Renaissance motets by Praetorius, Palestrina, and Morales glow alongside contemporary gems and newly commissioned works. That philosophy is audible everywhere. Seven classic carols appear in new arrangements written specifically for this project: Amanda Taylor’s sleek, bright re-envisioning of “O Come, All Ye Faithful”; Adam Brett Ward’s joyful, high-flying takes on “Ding Dong Merrily on High” and “Joy to the World”; and bass-baritone Jared Graveley’s inventive arrangements of “Good King Wenceslas / Little Girl Blue,” “Once in Royal David’s City,” and a hushed, cinematic “Silent Night.” Keeler himself contributes two arrangements—the Appalachian folk gem “And the Trees Do Moan” and a tender reshaping of “I Wonder as I Wander.”

The program glows with contrasts. Renaissance gems like Palestrina’s “Hodie Christus Natus Est” and Praetorius’s “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen” shimmer with Chanticleer’s trademark purity and impeccable tuning, while Lowell Mason’s “Joy to the World” arrives in a warm, freshly polished arrangement that never lapses into predictability. Joanna Marsh contributes two new commissions: the exhilarating, rhythmically alive “Star of Wonder” and the luminous “Coventry Carol,” each written with the group’s kaleidoscopic palette in mind. Even chestnuts like “Silent Night” and John Jacob Niles’s “I Wonder as I Wander” feel newly minted—intimate one moment, symphonic the next.

Joy to the World: If you need one album to score the season with beauty, brightness, and a little awe, this is it.

Chanticleer Holiday Tour 2025:
for information,
visit Chanticleer,
Outhere Music,
and Delos