Ragazzi Boys Chorus off to South Africa

Ragazzi Boys Chorus, under the direction of Joyce Keil, closes its season with GAMES, a concert featuring pieces specially arranged for Ragazzi’s upcoming tours in South Africa and Oregon’s PICFest this summer. The game theme will feature a hopeful rendition of “Baba Yetu,” the Grammy Award-winning theme of the video game Civilization IV. Other songs included revolve around the game of life, and of love. The boys will also present the powerful freedom song “Tshotsholoza,” taught to the chorus by the renowned Drakensberg Boys Choir, who will host Ragazzi at their home high in South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountains. This joyous send-off will be a well-deserved celebration of the Ragazzi Boys Chorus as they embark on their journey of musical reciprocity and cultural discovery. The concert takes place 7pm, Saturday May 30 at Aragon High School Performing Arts Center, 900 Alameda de las Pulgas, San Mateo. Tickets ($27) are available at www.Ragazzi.org or by calling (650) 342-8785.

GAMES will explore different facets of play, including the innocence of children’s games with “Totoyo,” a South American folk song about a little boy who won’t come in for dinner, ,” “God Only Knows,” as recorded for popular video game Bioshock Infinite, and “Contrapunto Bestiale alla Mente,” an Italian musical game that incorporates different animal vocalizations into each singer’s respective part.

Ragazzi will revel in the simple playfulness of dancing, treating the audience to the toe-tapping beats of “Suit and Tie,” by Justin Timberlake and “Seize the Day,” from the recent Broadway adaptation of Newsies. This musical expedition will continue with songs celebrating the so-called Game of Love, including “Man is for the Woman Made” by Henry Purcell, and “Tango Libertango” and “Bullerengue” from Colombia.

This celebration of Ragazzi’s upcoming journey will come to a close with “Amen Siakudumisa” by South African composer Stephen Cuthbert Molefe, and a patriotic a cappella arrangement of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director and co-founder of Ragazzi, has served as panelist, adjudicator and guest conductor for music teachers and choirs throughout the Western United States. She has served on the faculties of the College of Holy Names, Notre Dame de Namur University and Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco. She also founded of the choral program and advanced placement music theory curriculum at Crystal Springs Uplands School, and has served as Western Division Chair of the Boychoir Committee for the American Choral Directors Association.

Founded in 1987, Peninsula-based Ragazzi Boys Chorus is one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s premiere music and performance organizations for boys. Currently, there are more than 190 singers from 86 schools in 26 Bay Area communities participating in the program. Ragazzi means “boys” in Italian and is the term used in opera to refer to children’s voices. Ragazzi has performed with the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, Opera San Jose, West Bay Opera, Lawrence Pech Dance Company, Peninsula Symphony, Masterworks Chorale, and the Stanford University Symphonic Chorus. The group has toured throughout the United States and internationally. In 2000, Ragazzi was honored for its contribution to the San Francisco Symphony’s Grammy Award–winning recording of Stravinsky’s Perséphone, and has produced five CDs: Good News! 10 Years of Ragazzi Singing; A Holiday Collection; Canciones de Alabanza; Magnificat, My Spirit Rejoices; and Splendors of the Italian Baroque.

Tickets ($27) are available at www.Ragazzi.org or by calling (650) 342-8785.