Biography
The Boys of St. Paul's Choir School consists of fourth- through eighth-grade singers who supply soprano voices for the choir at the Church of St. Paul in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although the Vatican’s 1958 document De musica sacra urged urban Catholic churches to establish boys’ choir schools, the institution remains the sole example in the United States linked to the Catholic church. It opened in 1963 with an initial enrollment of twenty-five choristers drawn from the Boston archdiocese, created expressly in answer to that papal directive.
Theodore Marier guided the singers to swift artistic gains, resulting in collaborations with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at both Tanglewood and Symphony Hall, the Handel and Haydn Society, and the Boston Pops, where they supplied the wordless chorus for the Waltz of the Snowflakes in annual Nutcracker performances. Soon after Marier’s appointment the school received the name Boston Archdiocesan Choir School. John Dunn took the directorship in 1986 and served until 2010, when John Robinson, previously Assistant Organist at Canterbury Cathedral, assumed leadership. Robinson broadened the liturgical repertory and incorporated professional adult male singers into the ensemble. In its fiftieth-anniversary season of 2013 the group resumed its original title.
Roughly fifty-five choristers in the mid-2010s follow a standard academic program alongside vocal and instrumental instruction; they offset a portion of tuition by singing at local weddings and funerals. Visibility increased with the 2014 release of the debut recording Christmas in Harvard Square and the subsequent contract with Sony Classical, which issued the album Ave Maria in 2017.
Theodore Marier guided the singers to swift artistic gains, resulting in collaborations with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at both Tanglewood and Symphony Hall, the Handel and Haydn Society, and the Boston Pops, where they supplied the wordless chorus for the Waltz of the Snowflakes in annual Nutcracker performances. Soon after Marier’s appointment the school received the name Boston Archdiocesan Choir School. John Dunn took the directorship in 1986 and served until 2010, when John Robinson, previously Assistant Organist at Canterbury Cathedral, assumed leadership. Robinson broadened the liturgical repertory and incorporated professional adult male singers into the ensemble. In its fiftieth-anniversary season of 2013 the group resumed its original title.
Roughly fifty-five choristers in the mid-2010s follow a standard academic program alongside vocal and instrumental instruction; they offset a portion of tuition by singing at local weddings and funerals. Visibility increased with the 2014 release of the debut recording Christmas in Harvard Square and the subsequent contract with Sony Classical, which issued the album Ave Maria in 2017.