Pacific Boychoir Presents Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil (Vespers), Op. 37

Community News — By Buddy Sampson on May 7, 2013 at 7:31 am

Premiere Performance in Los Angeles

Features 75-Voice Boys and Men Choir

Grammy-award winning Pacific Boychoir of Oakland, California, presents Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil (Vespers), Op. 37 on Friday, May 10, 2013, 8 pm at First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. Performed every three years in Oakland and San Francisco, this marks the first time in the Pacific Boychoir’s history that this piece is being performed in Los Angeles, in its entirety, with an all-male choir including boy sopranos and boy altos in outstanding acoustics. The masterpiece was first premiered by a boy’s choir in Moscow in 1915. In 2007, the Pacific Boychoir became the first choir in America to reproduce the original performing forces. Along with Daniel Babcock as tenor soloist, Los Angeles’ finest choral tenors and basses augment the choir.

“The last time we were in Los Angeles was in 2006 where we performed with Dmitri Hvorostovsky in an all-Russian language program at a sold-out Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Vespers, also in Russian, will be our first full-length concert here and we look forward to engaging Los Angeles choral audiences,” exclaimed Pacific Boychoir Artistic Director Kevin Fox, who has been eager to bring this piece to Los Angeles.

The All-Night Vigil is an a cappella choral composition by Sergei Rachmaninoff; his Op. 37 was written and premiered in 1915. It consists of settings of texts taken from the Russian OrthodoxAll-night vigil ceremony. It has been praised as Rachmaninoff’s finest achievement and “the greatest musical achievement of the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Tickets range from $18 – $28 and may be purchased online at PacificBoychoirAcademy.org or at the venue box office on the night of the concert, if tickets remain. For more information call 510-652-4722. The First Congregational Church of Los Angeles is located at 540 South Commonwealth Avenue, Los Angeles 90020.

Pacific Boychoir Academy (PBA) was founded in 1998 with six boys and today comprises over 170 boys and young men age 4-18 in seven choirs. The PBA has become known for its rich sound, musicianship, phrasing, and talented soloists. The New York Times said the PBA goes “beyond the reach of most youth choirs” and the Los Angeles Times described the PBA quality of sound and musicianship as “astonishing.”

With the addition of a day school in 2004, the PBA has become the only choir school on America’s West Coast. The choir school integrates a full academic curriculum with daily musical instruction for boys in grades 4-8. The choir school students learn sight reading, music theory and repertoire, as well as Math, English, History, Science, Art, PE, and Languages. The choir school has one of the lowest student:teacher ratios for independent schools in the Bay Area, and is a member of the East Bay Independent Schools Association (EBISA).

The PBA has appeared frequently with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), performing under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, Kurt Masur, Robert Spano, David Robertson, James Conlon, Charles Dutoit, Herbert Blomstedt, and Vance George, performing works by Britten, Orff, Wagner, Mahler, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Berlioz. Along with the San Francisco Girls Chorus, the PBA recorded Mahler’s Third Symphony with the SFS, awarded the Grammy for Best Classical Album in February 2004. In January 2010, the SFS recording of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, featuring the SF Symphony Chorus, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and the PBA, was awarded Grammys for Best Choral Performance and Best Classical Album.

The PBA has also sung with the Oakland-East Bay Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, the UC Davis Orchestra, the American Bach Soloists, the San Francisco Opera, Trinity Lyric Opera, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, the National Symphony Orchestra of Brasil, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club, the Harvard Men’s Glee Club, the Vienna Boys Choir, the Drakensberg Boys Choir, the Boni Pueri Czech Boys Choir, Denmark’s Herning Boys Choir, the choirs of UC Berkeley and UC Davis, the American Boychoir, and the Santa Clara Chorale.