Young singers from Burnaby will be on the road this summer as part of a coast-to-coast tour of the country.
Seventeen boys from Burnaby are part of the B.C. Boys' Choir, which is embarking on a cross-Canada tour from June 27 to July 26 - including singing O Canada on Parliament Hill as part of the televised noon-hour Canada Day show.
Bicheng An, Charley Cai, Timoth Cameron, Luca Ferronato, Luke Gair, Manvir Gupta, Oliver Hermansen, Daniel Lee, Jared Legovini, Jeremy Lucero, Zyon McLean, Isaac Morgan, Kalyan Rath, Marko Sukunda, Joshua Yang, Kevin Ye and David Zhang will be part of the tour, which marks the choir's 45th anniversary.
They're touring with their special anniversary show, O Canada Our Home - Songs and Stories of Canada, which includes choral favourites from across Canada including Northwest Passage, I'se the B'y, this Is My Home, J'entends le Moulin and Frobisher Bay.
"The goal for this show and tour is to celebrate Canada, this great country, the people, cultures and traditions - through songs and stories," said the choir's executive director, Margot Holmes. "We are even dramatizing the poem We Are More, by B.C.'s Shane Koyczan, who presented it during the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver."
The choir will be led by artistic director Tony Araujo and associate conductor Edette Gagne.
The singers are being joined on tour by the Abbotsford Virtuosi violin ensemble, directed by Calvin Dyck.
The ensembles will perform in locations across the country, including Montreal, Ottawa, Gros Morne National Park and Corner Brook, N.L.; Sydney Mines and Lunenburg, N.S.; Charlottetown, Saint John, Toronto, Saskatoon, Banff and more.
"It's such a wonderful opportunity and fantastic cultural experience for these young artists to perform Canadian choral music across our own great nation - visiting each province, from sea to sea," Araujo said in the release.
The choir is holding three send-off concerts before the tour: Friday, June 20 at St. John Shaughnessy Church in Vancouver; Saturday, June 21 at South Abbotsford Church; and Sunday, June 22 at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo.
Check out www.bcboyschoir.org for all the details on the concerts and tour.
