The St. Charles Singers, led by founder and music director Jeffrey Hunt, will open its 38th concert season with a program featuring what Hunt describes as “the sublime sound of choir and cello.”

The program, titled Overturn the Night: Songs of Hope and Renewal, will mark the mixed-voice professional chamber choir’s first live-in-person performances since the start of the pandemic.

Concerts will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 2, and 3 p.m. Sunday, October 3, at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church, 307 Cedar Avenue, St. Charles.

Hailed by American Record Guide as “a national treasure,” the St. Charles Singers will present the world premiere of acclaimed, Grammy-nominated American composer Jake Runestad’s Cello Songs, commissioned for the St. Charles Singers and scored for choir, cello, and piano, with text by poet and librettist Todd Boss. The work’s four movements are named for the seasons of the year. “Runestad writes beautifully for massed voices,” the Chicago Tribune noted in a review. “No wonder he’s considered one of the best of the younger American choral composers.” Runestad, who is based in Minneapolis, will be present for both concerts.

Also written for choir and cello is Dan Forrest’s romantic song, “The Sun Never Says,” about the sun, earth, and “a love that lights the whole sky.”

Guest cellist is Cameron Grimes, a British-American artist now based in the U.S., who performed with the St. Charles Singers during the choir’s most recent English concert tour. Grimes recently completed a Master of Arts degree in cello performance from the Royal Academy of Music. He was founding cellist of the Emanuel String Quartet and has performed at chamber festivals in the U.S., U.K., Spain, Czech Republic, Netherlands, and beyond. In addition to his work as an orchestral musician, he has performed on soundtracks for BBC television and the Fox Searchlight Pictures film “Tolkien.”

Audiences will hear the world premiere of St. Charles Singers soprano Marybeth Kurnat’s “Epitaph for a Romantic Woman,” her musical setting of a poem by Louise Bogan, whom the Poetry Foundation calls “one of the most accomplished American poet-critics of the mid-20th century.” The choir will perform Bob Chilcott’s “Unison,” an anthem to human unity; Arvo Pärt’s “O Weisheit,” with text from the book of Isaiah; Will Todd’s “Remembrance,” on the subject of World War I; the Black spirituals “My Lord, What a Mornin’” by Harry T. Burleigh and “Soon-ah will be done” by William Dawson; Jonathan Dove’s “In beauty may I walk,” based on a Navajo text that celebrates the natural world; Joan Szymko’s “River,” a song of environmental urgency; and pop singer Carly Simon’s dreamlike and hopeful “Let the River Run,” arranged by Grammy Award-winning choirmaster Craig Hella Johnson.