THE UST Singers were crowned “Choir of the World Champions” at the Choir of the World Champion of Champions Online Voting Contest, besting 32 other choirs from all over the world.
The Singers are the first choral group to win the much-coveted Luciano Pavarotti Grand Prize of the Choir of the World competition twice, first garnering the award in 1995 and again in 2010 in the mixed (male and female) choir category.
Because of their victory in the mixed category, UST Singers were selected as candidates for the Choir of the World Champion of Champions title, which was to be awarded to any of the 32 Grand Prize Winners from 1987-2018 in an online voting contest.
The video of the UST Singers’s 2010 winning performance, where they sang “Her Sacred Spirit Roars,” a 7-minute piece by Eric Whitacre, and “Gabaqan,” an ethnic-inspired contemporary piece by Filipino composer Ruben Federizon, was posted in the online voting contest.
The performance was led by conductor and Conservatory of Music alumnus Fidel Calalang.
“The UST Singers will also celebrate 28 years of its foundation with a concert at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, which will see the participation of all the UST Singers’ members, from 1993 to the current batch,” Calalang said during an online interview with the Varsitarian.
The Choir of the World contest was launched by the LLangollen International Music Eistedfodd, an annual music festival founded in 1947 which hosts one of the world’s oldest international choral competitions. It is held in the village of Llangollen in North Wales, United Kingdom. Neil Paolo S. Gonzales
