In 1979, Bill Chin was just out of college with a degree in music education and the ambition to be a choral director. He had no experience, but he had a friend who worked for the Halcyon Repertory Co., who were staging a production of Machiavelli’s “Mandragola.” The theater company needed a music director.
Chin took the job and it changed his life. He earned a prestigious Jeff Award given for excellence in equity theater in the Chicago area, and then decided “it was time to do the thing that I wanted to do.”
He brought together some singers from the Halcyon and some other friends, and The Oriana Singers were born.
As it celebrates its 45th anniversary, the group will be performing Oct. 26 in Oak Park and Oct. 27 in Chicago with “Monteverdi’s Other Vespers.”
Although he is most famous for his Vespers of 1610 (performed last year by The Oriana Singers and City Voices), Monteverdi continued to write music for the Vespers service and this concert includes a collection published in 1641. It is arranged for a more intimate ensemble.
“Last year we had almost 40 voices and a 12-piece chamber orchestra. This year we have just eight singers and five period instruments,” said Chin.
Chin said he was profoundly influenced by his time in a madrigal singing group at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Madrigal singers perform a type of secular music that was popular during the Renaissance.
In a post on Facebook, Chin said his exposure to this kind of singing was “a life-changing experience. I learned to love singing in a small choral ensemble and [have] sought that throughout my musical career.”
At first, The Oriana Singers was a small chorus and Chin was the conductor. Within a few years, they settled into a smaller group of six singers, without a conductor. That arrangement continued until recently when the group expanded to eight.
“You don’t want to be the same thing forever,” said Chin. “Not everything is written for six voices. I’m looking for flexibility and room to grow. I don’t want to be tied to a certain configuration.”
In addition to regular concerts, The Oriana Singers have toured.
“In the early 1990s, we went on a three-week van tour through the Great Plains. We also went to Europe twice. The first time we were in a choral competition in Germany where we tied for third place. That allowed us to go to another competition in Spain a few years later. And we also did a one-week tour in Costa Rica for a chamber music festival,” said Chin.
One of the more unusual things the group has done in its long history was record songs for Ladybug, a children’s magazine that was founded in 1990.
“This was back in the days of cassettes,” Chin recalled. “On one side of the cassette we recorded the ‘vanilla’ version of a song and on the flip side was a fully arranged version of the song that was written by one of our ensemble members. We had a piano, six singers, and a children’s chorus. That was a crazy project. The cassettes were available to subscribers of the magazine and included ‘Bingo,’ ‘The Ants Go Marching,’ and ‘In a Cabin in the Woods.’”
“Monteverdi’s Other Vespers” will be performed on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 7:30 p.m. at First United Church of Oak Park at 848 Lake St. and on Sunday, Oct. 27, at 4 p.m. at St. Josaphat Parish at 2311 N. Southport Ave. in Chicago. Tickets are $35 general admission, $30 for seniors 65 and over, and free for students 22 and under. Visit www.oriana.org to purchase tickets