PGMA to grace Las Pinas Boys Choir’s victory concert Friday evening

MANILA, Sept. 19 (PNA) -- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will grace Friday evening the victory concert of the triumphant Las Pinas Boys’ Choir (LPBC) who were proclaimed World Champion in the Children’s Choir Category of the 5th World Choir Games 2008 in Styria, Austria last July.

The victory concert of the 38-year old LPBC that bested more than 70 choirs from all over the world, will be held at the Philam Life Theater in Ermita, Manila at 8 p.m.

Some ambassadors to the Philippines led by the Austrian envoy who helped bring the LPBC to the Austria choir competition will join the President in the one-and-a-half hour concert.

The LPBC paid a courtesy call on President Arroyo in Malacanang last Aug 6.

The 5th World Choir Games – which was held on July 9-19, 2008 in Graz, one of the UNESCO’s world cultural heritage sites -- has been touted as the largest and most successful choir competition world, with a total of some 450 choirs composed of around 20,000 singers from 93 nations joining the choral contest.

With only 20 of its members managing to join the competition due to fund constraints, the lean-and-mean LPBC delegation also garnered the Silver Medal in the Musica Sacra (Sacred Music) Category, said to be the most prestigious category of the World Choir Games.

Adding significance to the LPBC’s Silver Medal in the latter category is the fact that most of the competing choirs were either professional or adult choirs of 40-80 members, all considered as the best choirs in the world; while the LPBC is composed of young boys aged 8-15 years old.

Founded by Belgian Fr. Leo Renier, CICM, who remains a consultant of the LPBC, the choir has as its conductor Prof. Armando Salarza who studied in Graz, Austria and later worked there and in Vienna for 10 years as organist and church musician.