Liberaaa....

Happy Labor Day Weekend everyone!  To celebrate, my family is having friends over for a barbeque.  I didn't know about this little party until our friends were arriving.  Oh well, at least there's good food to eat!  :D

I know I said in my off-season Christmas music post that I'd talk about one of my favorite vocal groups.  Get ready for a huge amount of gushing.

Libera is a boys choir from South London.  I may be wrong, but I believe there are about forty or so boys in it, even though they don't all go on tour.  They usually start out at about age seven to nine (called the mini-boys), and can range up to about age eighteen.  Some of the boys leave the choir after their voices have broken.  But the die-hard members stay on because it has been such an amazing part of their life.  The unique thing about Libera is that with every generation of singers, more young ones come in when the older ones leave.  In that way, Libera has gone on for 15+ years.  Cool, huh?  

As it says, Libera 2011 members that were on tour.  (choirfan.wordpress.com, Courtesy of French fan Fan_de_LoK)

Another piece of important info is that the choir is run by a man named Robert Prizeman.  He is truly a genius and deserves more credit than he is given because he has written many songs that Libera sings, directs them AND plays instruments during their concerts, and he arranges the boys' voices into astonishing harmonies.  Not to mention he deals with a bunch of pre-adolescent boys during tours. 

Reasons I love this choir...

1)  Their voices are freakingly angelic and high.  The first time I heard a Libera song (props to Pandora!), I thought the people that were singing were girls.  Imagine the surprise on my face when I found out that they were BOYS.  

2)  It is so different from a lot of the music that I usually listen to.  They sing mostly classical sounding music, and a large number of their songs are in Latin.  I like pop music and "pure music", which is what I categorize songs with acoustic guitars and actual pianos, instruments like that.  I'm very surprised with myself that I kept listening to Libera.

3)  The soloists are above stellar.  Only a choice handful of boys are continuous soloists, and I do say that the director of Libera, Robert Prizeman, has picked them well.  If you think about it, during concerts, soloists have to sing by themselves LIVE.  That's a bit scary...  but whaddya know?  All reports from concerts say that they sound great every time! 

      This should probably go with number three, but I'll give it it's own number.

Ralph Skan!  (dearmadine.blogspot.com)

Tom Cully!  (inridi.blogspot.com)

4)  Ralph Skan and Tom Cully.  My favorite soloists ever in Libera.  You can hear Ralph here in one of my favorite songs, Song of Life.  Hint, he's the one that sings first.  Ralph is currently in Libera, but sadly, his voice is getting lower so he won't be singing solos soon.  Tom Cully is probably the best soloist Libera ever had, in my opinion.  He had an amazing range, and while he was in the choir and you heard someone sing super high, you immediately knew it was him.  He left some years ago, but still comes back to help with the choir sometimes.  You can hear him here in You Were There (he also sings first).  If you really want to hear him sing super high, you can listen to Ave Maria here.  Hint, he sings alone and so high that your throat hurts when you hear it.      

Less legit reasons of why I love this choir...

1)  I think it's awesome how people younger than me can become so famous.  Especially young boys singing.  Super obsessed fans in Japan (yes, they tour largely in Japan.  Actually, the people in Japan are probably their biggest fans!) fight to get autographs from boys that are the same age as my sometimes-annoying younger cousins.  

2)  The mini-boys are so cute and adorable.  I know they're not much more different than other boys in elementary or grade school, but they look so innocent in their white robes! 

Lookin' spiffy in the white robes...  (thenobleartofmusic.blogspot.com)

3)  They rock their signature white robes pretty well.  Libera wears white robes to most of their concerts (their formal concert attire, haha).  The boys say that it originated from monks long ago.  Oh, and their hoods on their robes are gigantic!  It looks like the mini-boys could get lost in them!  :)

4)  Libera's name is Libera!  For those of you who don't know, it's Latin for "free".  Their name came from this song, here.   

Libera takes Moose on tour!  (libera.org.uk)

5)  Their group mascot is a small stuffed moose called Moose.  

That's all that I could think of for now.  Whew...  It was quite a lot to type.

I'm really sincerely sorry if you read through this whole post and had no interest whatsoever in Libera.  I just had to share it with potential fans!  If you'd like to know more about them, you could go explore their website, Facebook, and Twitter.  Numerous fans have blogs completely devoted to "all things Libera" that you can google.  My favorites are called *BEAUTIFUL STRANGERS* and Mini Angels.  I'll keep updating with little random facts I've learned about Libera, and also with Daves Highway and the Gardiner Sisters.  

Thank you all so much for reading, and have fun rest of the weekend!  Happy listening!