Chicago Classical Review

Chicago audiences are the beneficiaries of a wealth of vocal talent—so much so that to hear every excellent chorus in the space of a single concert season would be an insurmountable task. 

Consonance, previously known as Chicago Choral Artists, delivers only a handful of programs each year and performs primarily in the city’s western suburbs. But in the final concert of its 50th season Sunday afternoon, the group reasserted its worthy place in the lineup of the city’s venerable singing ensembles.

Sunday’s concert at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest served up a topical program on the occasion of Women’s History Month, a wide range of works centered on messages of female empowerment. Consonance was joined on this occasion by the Spirito Singers’ Bravura Ensemble, a youth choir for treble voices, and soprano Laura Strickling as featured soloist.

The first half of the program was a smorgasbord of vocal stylings that gave each contributor their due. As the headliners, the Consonance singers, conducted by artistic director Michael Costello, led off with Sarah Kirkland Snider’s You Must Feel with Certainty. This ambitious starter established the chorus’s bona fides in the singers’ deft handling of the glassy, sharp-edged harmonies, which was followed by Libby Larsen’s airy A Young Nun, Singing.

Elsewhere in the first half, the women of Consonance lent a cool, sympathetic affect to Elizabeth Alexander’s bluesy Why I Pity the Woman Who Never Spills. The singers brought sizzle and snappy diction to the slippery, lilting setting of Joan Wolf Prefontaine’s poem, which invites a woman to let her messier side loose to reignite her spark.

The Spirito Singers, led by artistic director Carling FitzSimmons, took up this thread with Alexandra Olsavsky’s foot-stomping What Happens When a Woman, which featured confident, clarion solos by its ensemble members. FitzSimmon’s arrangement of pop singer Jessie J.’s “Flashlight” and a tasteful rendition of the spiritual “Nothin’ Gonna Stumble My Feet” offered some lighter fare. 

The young singers also provided the emotional anchor of the program’s first half with Zanaida Stewart Robles’ Beautiful. Written when the composer was 16, the work adheres to a familiar verse-chorus form structured around accessible harmonies, crowned by an achingly beautiful refrain melody and a plainspoken but poignant text. The Spirito Singers sang with diligence and heart, enabling this accessible gem to shine.

Strickling’s solo turns throughout the first half were modest, reserving most of her firepower for the program’s second half, though her incisive reading of the art song “Woman Walking” — which she commissioned from composer Nell Shaw Cohen — was another program highlight.

Throughout the first half, Costello supported Strickland and the Spirito Singers sensitively and capably from the piano, though props are particularly due to FitzSimmons for her committed direction. By turns evocative and athletic, her conducting was enjoyable to watch as much for the engagement it elicited from the singers as for its vigor.

The Highwomen’s “Crowded Table”— a paean for togetherness with a timeless, hymnic quality that belies the song’s recency — united both choirs in a heartfelt closer to the program’s first half.

After intermission, the myriad singers reassembled for the headline work, Jocelyn Hagen’s Here I Am, described by the Minnesota-based composer as a multimedia symphony. In addition to the complete choral roster, the singers were joined by an instrumental ensemble comprising clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, string quartet, piano, and three percussionists. 

Over the course of its four movements, Here I Am illustrates women’s struggle for equality and empowerment through dozens of quotes by notable women, ranging from Hildegard von Bingen and Susan B. Anthony to Margaret Thatcher, Glennon Doyle, and the composer herself. Chorus members cycle through these recitations by way of interlude between the core text settings of each movement, with the instrumentalists providing an Americana-tinged underscore.

Hagen’s piece comprises an abundance of fine choral writing, and the projected visuals—which depicted original portraits of these esteemed women interspersed with elegantly abstract animation—proved a welcome supplement to the musical content. 

But the interleaved recitations at times came across as heavy-handed, especially when the pat delivery of quotes rivaled the chorus passages in length and pulled focus from the concurrent instrumental interludes.

Still, the combined choirs, under Costello’s confident direction, gave an unabashedly spirited performance adorned by contributions from Strickling’s powerful and polished soprano. The contemplative final movement, “Write the Story,” benefited from a particularly moving text by Amanda Lovelace, which the singers conveyed with an air of sobriety and measured pathos. 

Costello skillfully led the chorus through the ensuing crescendo that culminated in an exhilarating sweep up to a high, shimmering chord.

Consonance’s 2026-2027 season opens with performances of Craig Hella Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepard, October 9 and 11 at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest. consonancechicago.org

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