By Joseph Seta, Grayson Resident
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Atlanta Boy Choir poses in front of St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow.
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Every summer the Atlanta Boy Choir goes on a tour that includes sight seeing and lots of concerts in places all over the world. This year, we went to Ukraine and Russia. It was a really exciting trip because we visited places so far away and different from our home, and because the people there were so welcoming and excited about our concerts!
The first stop on our tour was Ukraine, where we stayed in Kiev with families of a local boy choir. Kiev is the capital of Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union until 1991. The most famous sights we saw include the Statue of Motherland, which stands a hundred and two meters high overlooking the Dnipr River, and several ornate Russian Orthodox churches. We performed two concerts in Kiev. The first concert was with the Kiev Symphony Orchestra, and the second concert was with the local boy choir with whom we stayed while we were there. Those boys didn't speak very much English, but they joined us in singing our National Anthem and they sang it perfectly! We sang their National Anthem with them too, and when we sang, the full house crowd stood and clapped with enthusiasm! From Kiev we went to Odessa, which is located on the Black Sea. There we performed with the same boy choir again and the crowd was so excited that they purchased lots of our CD's and the local girls waited after the concert to ask several of our choristers for autographs. We also went to the beach and swam in the Black Sea. My favorite part was diving into the water from the pier! Another highlight of our visit to Odessa was eating at McDonald's. The menu was about the same as McDonald's here, but for some reason it was the best Big Mac I ever tasted! They served their drinks with no ice, which is pretty much the way they serve drinks everywhere in Ukraine and Russia. They think ice is bad for your stomach.
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Atlanta Boy Choir members, (from left to right) Ryan Kingsley, Austin Brydie, and Joseph Seta, enjoy lunch at McDonald's in Russia
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From Ukraine we traveled by train overnight to Moscow, the capital of Russia. There we visited several famous sights including the Kremlin, the Red Square, and my favorite, St. Basil's Cathedral. I liked that church best because of the brightly colored, onion shaped domes on the top of the cathedral. We performed several concerts in Moscow, including a performance at The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which is an impressive white building with several gold domes towering over the city. From Moscow we traveled to St. Petersburg, a traditional Western European city where we experienced the famous white nights, since the sun set at about midnight and rose the next morning around 4:30 am. We visited the Hermitage, which was the summer residence of the czars of Russia. St. Petersburg is like Venice in that they have canals in the city and people travel by boat, so we took a boat ride while we were there. The final concert of our tour was in St. Petersburg with a local boy choir. Since we knew it was the last time we would all perform together, we made it our best performance, and the crowd really cheered. From there we took another overnight train back to Moscow and boarded a familiar Delta jet to come back to Atlanta. Although we had a wonderful time, we were all glad to see Atlanta posted on the sign at our departure gate. We were also glad to have ice in our drinks on the way back home!
The Atlanta Boy Choir will host auditions for the 2008-2009 Choir in September. If you like to sing and travel to exciting places, you should come and audition to join the Choir. Go to www.AtlantaBoyChoir.org or call (404) 378-0064 to schedule an audition. You can also see videos from our tour on the website.
