MANILA, Philippines?The Las Pias Boys Choir was declared the champion in the children?s choir category of the 5th World Choir Games on July 10-14 in Graz, Austria.
But in what was perhaps a more important achievement, the Las Pias choir won the silver medal in the sacred music category against professional choirs whose members were older.
Moreover, many of the choirs that participated had 40 to 60 members while the Las Pias choir had only 20 boys.
Another Philippine choir, the Kilyawan Boys Choir of Quezon City, was declared champion in choral a capella of contemporary music category.
The choral festival, a biennial event that formerly took place in Linz in Austria, Busan in South Korea, Bremen in Germany and Xiamen in China, is considered the world?s largest choral competition. This year, more than 400 choirs from more than 90 nations participated.
The Las Pias choir is composed of 20 young boys whose age range from 9 to 16 years old. The delegation was headed by Msgr. Albert Venus, parish priest of St. Joseph?s Parish church and school director of the St. Joseph?s Academy, where these young boys are enrolled.
Most of the choirs in the Graz competition came from China, Russia, Austria and Germany. A big number of delegates were also sent by Indonesia, Hungary and Croatia.
During the competition, the choirs demonstrated their abilities before 71 international jurors. There were more than 600 performances in 28 different categories.
Two-thirds of the participants were children, teenagers and young adults. Other than the young choir competition, other categories were folklore, musica sacra, popular choir music as well as gospel and spiritual.
The Las Pias choir will be coming back to Manila at 4 p.m. Wednesday. A motorcade has been set by the Las Pias government from the airport to Las Pias church.
