The Sherman Arts Foundation presents a VIP Reception with an evening of food, cocktails and live performances followed by a concert with the Vienna Boys Choir for the benefit of the Sherman Theater non-profit 501 (c) 3 organization. Your ticket will also include premium seating to the Vienna Boys Choir Concert. The VIP Reception will be from 5:30PM and the concert will begin promptly at 7:30PM. This event is Black Tie Optional.
Please join us Friday, March 8, 2013 to celebrate the Sherman Theater’s eighth-year anniversary of driving economic development, supporting our community and providing a venue for local and touring artists. We are hoping that you will support the Sherman Theater by helping make our “8th Anniversary Gala” a success.
In 1498, 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. For want of a foundation charter, 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.
Musicians like Heinrich Isaac, Paul Hofhaimer, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Johann Joseph Fux, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Caldara, Antonio Salieri and Anton Bruckner worked with the choir. Composers Jacobus Gallus, Franz Schubert, and conductors Hans Richter, Felix Mottl and Clemens Krauss were themselves choristers. Brothers Joseph and Michael Haydn were members of the choir of St. Stephen's Cathedral, and sang frequently with the imperial boys' choir.
Today there are 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.
Together with members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera Chorus, the Wiener Sängerknaben maintain the tradition of the imperial musicians: as Hofmusikkapelle they provide the music for the Sunday Mass in Vienna's Imperial Chapel, as they have done since 1498.
The choir is a private, not-for-profit organisation. The eight members of the choir's governing body oversee its development and guarantee its future. The current president is Walter Nettig. Gerald Wirth became the choir's artistic director in 2001.
