Opus 3 Artists will be presenting a concert by the Vienna Boys Choir at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium. Known in German as Wiener Sangerknaben, they are a choir of boy sopranos and altos based in Vienna. Considered as one of the best boys' choirs in the world, most of these the boys are selected from Austria, as well as from other countries.Vienna Boys Choir is a not-for-profit private organization. There are around a 100 choristers between the ages of ten and fourteen. They are segregated into four touring choirs that are named after the Austrian composers Bruckner, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert. Combined together the choir performs about 300 concerts every year. Each group tours for a span of nine to eleven weeks. Some of their famous pieces include "Good Morning" and "Merry Christmas from Vienna Boys".They are termed as the new age descendant of the Viennese Court’s boys' choirs that dates back to the late Middle Ages. The choir was established on the insistence of Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg in 1498, who instructed court officials to employ one singing master along with two basses and six boys. Jurij Slatkonja became the first director of the group.The choir’s job was to be the musical auxiliary for the church mass. After the fall of the Austrian Empire in 1920, the Hofkapelle, meaning the court orchestra was disbanded but Josef Schnitt, the then rector sought a continuation of the tradition. The Vienna Boys' Choir was officially founded in 1924, and since then the choir has evolved into a respectable professional music group. They adopted their famous blue and white sailor suit, replacing the imperial military cadet uniform with a dagger. HK Gruber, the famous composer is one of the graduates of the reformed choir. Since the late 1940’s, the Palais Augarten has been the official rehearsal venue and boarding school for the choir, which starts from kindergarten level and carries on up to the middle school level.In 2001, Gerald Wirth became the choir's artistic director and the choir’s President in 2013. In 1961, Hollywood’s production company Walt Disney filmed Almost Angels, a fictional drama about the Vienna Boys' Choir, set and filmed in the Palais Augarten. For cinematographic reasons, Disney persuaded the Austrian government to let boys wear the Austrian national emblem on the breast of their uniform, a tradition that continues till this day.Over the centuries, the Vienna Boys Choir has worked under many illustrious composers like Fux, Caldara, Gluck, Salieri, Mozart, Franz Schubert, Heinrich Isaac, Hofhaimer, Biber, and Bruckner.The concert is on December 16, 2018 at The Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave, New York, NYFor details, visit: www.carnegiehall.orgClick on the slideshow for a sneak peek at The Vienna Choir Boys. http://www.blouinartinfo.com Founder: Louise Blouin
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