Cantus’ ‘All Is Calm’ will be broadcast

December 23, 2008.By Pioneer Press.

If you didn’t get a chance to hear the Minnesota-based male choir Cantus performing “All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914” at the Pantages Theater earlier this month, you can listen to the show in its entirety at 7 p.m. today on Minnesota Public Radio (99.5 FM). Excerpts from the show and interviews with its creators Peter Rothstein and Erick Lichte will be featured on “Performance Today,” which airs on more than 250 stations around the country at various times. It will air on MPR at 11 a.m. on Christmas Eve.

The moving musical is based on real stories from the first Christmas during World War I, when men from opposing forces laid down their arms on the battlefield in a spontaneous truce. “All Is Calm” is told in the words and songs of soldiers in the Allied Forces and the German army, who met in No Man’s Land between their trenches to celebrate Christmas. It uses quotes from 30 WWI figures and music ranging from patriotic tunes to holiday carols. On that winter night, enemy troops traded carols, food and drink, photo-graphs of loved ones, played soccer and buried each other’s dead.