Boys with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background

Eight members and five adults traveled to San Francisco on July 13 to participate in the Golden Gate International Festival for Children's and Youth Choirs, sponsored by the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir, Piedmont, CA. 

Richmond Culp was in Mississippi Boychoir from 2001 through 2003 when he was in the sixth and seventh grades.  He had the distinction of being the Boychoir’s emissary to Seattle to sing Eudora’s Fable: The Shoe Bird with the Seattle Symphony’s Northwest premier of that work, which Mississippi Boychoir commissioned Samuel Jones to write.  The work is based on Eudora Welty’s book, The Shoe Bird.  Jones,  a native Mississippian, is Composer-in-Residence at the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

A review of the choir’s performance appeared on April 27 in The Continuo Online, a publication of the Jackson Chapter of the American Guild of Organist.    The Continuo is an ongoing calendar which lists performances by artists and arts organizations in the state of Mississippi.

Boys who love to sing are encouraged to audition for the 2009-2010 Season of Mississippi Boychoir. Choir membership is by invitation after an audition, which can be arranged with the choir’s Manager, Betty Jacobs, 601-366-0579, or the conductor, Margaret E. Thomas, 601-554-3222.
 

The centuries old European tradition of choral singing by men and boys at the close of the day is accessible to Mississippians during Mississippi Boychoir’s Evensong Service presentations in April and May, 2009. The services are in collaboration with Parkway Heights United Methodist Church in Hattiesburg, Fondren Presbyterian Church in Jackson, and St. John’s Episcopal Church in Laurel.

On November 1 Conductor Margaret Thomas, Manager Betty Jacobs, and Board President Diane Blankenhorn joined the excitement going on in Seattle, where the release of a new audio was being celebrated with two performances of a work that was commissioned by Mississippi Boychoir in 1999.  A four-year, $80,000 project from conception to performance, Eudora’s Fable: The Shoe Bird was based on a book for children written by one of Mississippi’s Pulitzer Prize authors, Eudora Welty, and was set to music by native Mississippian, Samuel Jones, the current composer in residence at the Seatlle Symphony.

Mississippi Boychoir Christmas concerts are again being presented at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Hattiesburg and at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Jackson. The concerts feature Christmas favorites from several centuries, representing varying styles. Included in the repertoire is the Alleluia from Bach’s Christmas Cantata #142, the French carol Il est ne le divin enfant, a K. Lee Scott arrangement of the same traditional Welsh melody from which Suo Gan was based in the movie, Empire of the Sun, and concluding with jazz arrangements of I’ll Be Home for Christmas and Jingle Bell Rock.