Music aficionados are in for a treat this coming March, as Maestro Ezio Bosso and the Vienna Boys Choir will be in Malta next month for two concerts, organised in aid of the Malta Community Chest Fund Foundation. Both concerts were launched this morning at a Press Conference, in the presence of President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, President of Malta, Mario Sammartino, Ambassador of Italy to Malta, Joe Darmanin, Former Honorary Consul General for Austria in Malta, and Michael Aquilina, Operations Manager of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, together with Kenneth Zammit Tabona, on behalf of Teatru Manoel.

The world-renowned Vienna Boys Choir will perform on 20 March at Teatru Manoel, and they will also be animating mass at St John's Co-Cathedral on 18 March. Composer, Pianist and Conductor, Ezio Bosso will direct the Malta Philarmomic Orchestra, also at Teatru Manoel on 25 March.

The Vienna Boys Choir goes back to 1498 when Maximilian I (HRR) moved his court to Vienna, lock, stock, and choir, thus founding the "Hofmusikkapelle" (Chapel Imperial), and the Vienna Boys Choir. Over the centuries, the Viennese Court attracted great musicians like Isaac, de Monte, Fux, Caldara, Gluck, Salieri, Mozart, and Bruckner; Joseph Haydn, Michael Haydn, and Franz Schubert were themselves choir boys. Until 1918, the boys sang exclusively for the court. In the 1920s, the choir was re-established as a private organisation. Since 1926, 2482 Vienna Boys Choir has sung 1000 tours in 97 different countries. Gerald Wirth is its Artistic Director, and its president.

Today, there are 100 choristers between the ages of nine and fourteen, divided into four touring choirs. Each choir spends nine to eleven weeks of the academic year on tour. Together, the choirs give around 300 concerts each year, attended by almost half a million spectators around the world. The choir regularly tours Europe, Asia and Australia, and the Americas.

On Sundays, the boys perform with members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and of the Vienna State Opera Chorus in Vienna's Imperial Chapel, as they have done since 1498. In 2012, the choir opened its own concert hall, MuTh; the state-of-the art facility seats 400 and has proven highly popular with both artists and audience.

The choir's repertoire includes everything from medieval to contemporary music. Motets and lieder form the core of the touring repertoire, as do the choir's own arrangements of Viennese music. The choir also performs children's operas and world music.

Known as one of the most influential contemporary composers, Ezio Bosso was born in Turin into a working-class family but right from the very beginning, he expressed a strong desire to go beyond the national boundaries that has characterised his entire career. At the age of 16, he made his debut in France as a soloist, subsequently, he studied composition and conducting at the Vienna Academy and went on to collaborate with several European orchestras.

Eclecticism, versatility and generosity are the distinguishing features of his artistic career and the endless list of his collaborations with prestigious musical institutions and concert seasons in which he has performed as a composer or a performer, as a conductor or as a member of chamber music ensembles includes: the Royal Festival Hall in London, the Sydney Opera House, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Teatro Regio in Turin, the Houston Symphony, the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, the Festival of Perelada, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Lac Lugano and KKL in Lucerne.

He has received important acknowledgements, such as the Green Room Award in Australia (to date, he is the only non-Australian to have been awarded such prize) and the Syracuse-New York Award in the USA; his music has been commissioned or used by the most important opera institutions worldwide such as the Wiener Staatsoper, the Royal Opera House, the New York City Ballet, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the San Francisco Ballet, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow to mention only a few; by prestigious choreographers (Christopher Wheeldon, Edwaard Liang, Rafael Bonachela), for theatrical scores in collaboration with famous theatre directors such as James Thierrée and with internationally-renowned film directors such as Gabriele Salvatores.

In London, where he has lived for some time, he has been, until recently, the long-term artistic director of The London Strings.

When diagnosed with a degenerative ailment in 2011, he was determined that this would not stop him from doing what he loves most. After undergoing brain surgery for the removal of a tumor that happened, as he says, 'in a history of the dark', he had forgotten how to speak and to play, and had to re-learn everything all over again, but he did not give up.

In 2015, The Arts Newspaper and Penelope Curtis, the director of the Tate Britain, have defined his concert at the Ikon Gallery - held inside the exhibition space containing the artwork entitled 3 Drawing Rooms by David Tremlett - the artistic event of the year in the United Kingdom. In the same year, he was chosen by the Alma Mater University in Bologna to write and conduct his Symphony No.4 dedicated to the Magna Charta of the European Universities and which contains the first official anthem of this primary global institution.

In 2016 Sony Classical released the anthology "Ezio Bosso...and the things that remain (from 2004 to the present day)" in two CDs including a selection of tracks from all his albums and one DVD featuring eight new videos recorded in September 2016.

 

Tickets for these concerts are now on sale at www.teatrumanoel.com.mt or from the Booking Office of Teatru Manoel. Whilst these are separate concerts, there is a special price for those booking tickets for both concerts, as a package.

These concerts are being held in aid of the Malta Community Chest Fund Foundation.