CONCERT IS SOLD OUT!

The 2012 President's Concert will feature a performance by the awe-inspiring Vienna Boys Choir.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012
8 p.m., Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center Lila Cockrell Theater. All tickets are for General Admission only.
Doors open at 7:15 p.m.

Ticket Pick-up: Go to the Information Booth on Wednesday from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Convention Registration area (and following that, in the Lila Cockrell Theater lobby).

Vienna Boys Choir

More than half a millennium ago, Emperor Maximilian I moved his court and his court musicians from Innsbruck to Vienna. He gave specific instructions that there were to be six boys among his musicians. Historians have settled on 1498 as the official foundation date of the Vienna Hofmusikkapelle and, in consequence, the Vienna Boys Choir. Until 1918, the choir sang exclusively for the court, at mass, at private concerts and functions and on state occasions.

Today around 100 choristers between the ages of ten and fourteen, divided into four touring choirs. The four choirs give around 300 concerts and performances each year in front of almost half a million people. Each group spends nine to eleven weeks of the school year on tour. They visit virtually all European countries, and they are frequent guests in Asia, Australia and the Americas. The choir's repertoire includes everything from medieval to contemporary and experimental music. Motets and lieder for boys' choir form the core of the touring repertoire, as do the choir's own arrangements of waltzes and polkas by Strauss. Both the choir and the Hofmusikkapelle have a long tradition of commissioning new works.

Learn more about the Vienna Boys Choir . . .