We Toast The Days

Read Inspired Choir’s Colleen McNickle’s feature of We Toast the Days including teacher resources and discussion guides here.

Each half of the concert ended with something that shone a lovely spotlight on the group’s harmonic artistry. First came the piece that inspired a group of St. Olaf College students to form Cantus in the first place, Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria.” If that represented the past, then a bright future could be glimpsed in the program-closing “We Toast the Days” by Twin Cities composer Linda Kachelmeier, who may have created a 21st-century “Auld Lang Syne,” a beautiful ballad that deserves to become a standard of the season.

Rob Hubbard, December 2024 Star Tribune

The post-production phase of this recording project (Be All Merry — Signum Classics) took place as the world grappled with the outbreak of COVID-19. American composer Linda Kachelmeier’s piece–We Toast the Days serves as a reminder of the strength, love, and hope that resonated throughout the world not simply at Christmastide but also during periods of hardship.

Desmond Earley, Artistic Director, the Choral Scholars of University College Dublin