The music is all-American. There's Stephen Foster: Gene Puerling's adaptation of "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" is sung with sentiment, but always stays on this side of cheez-whiz overindulgence; and there's Gershwin: again, Puerling's elegant arrangement of "Love Walked In" is pure magic. But be prepared to go in some surprising directions: early 17th-century Latin liturgical works from Mexico, or a haunting, chant-like Appalachian tune set to the popular hymn text "Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah." There's a handful of representatives from the great and often overlooked 18th and 19th century tradition of hymnody and shape-note singing, presented with a austere rawness wholly in keeping with their Folk Art origins; William Billings' "David's Lamentation" is a particular gem, a strange and harrowing illustration of pure grief. Several works by American composers tie "Our American Journey" neatly together, illustrating Chanticleer's position on the cusp of the modern and the ancient; Steven Stucky's "Whispers" is an eerie and somnolent combination of William Byrd and Walt Whitman, and William Hawley's settings of poems of renaissance Italian Torquato Tasso are a masterly and gorgeous reminiscence of Gesualdo.

"Our American Journey" is musical patriotism of the finest sort, the flip side of Sousa marches, and Chanticleer is just the right group for it. Their diverse mastery gets at the heart of myriad influences that make American music, like American culture, sui generis.

David Simmons, WQXR