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Over four hours weekly each member of the Grazer Keplerspatzen (= GKS) rehearses - and beside the school, usually before or following arduous instruction. All members are or were pupils at the Bundesrealgymnasium Keplerstraße. The choir was created by Fritz Haselwander in the school year 1967/68; since 1993 the choir is led by Ulrich Höhs, a music educator at the BRG Keplerstrasse.
During the long existence of the choir existence more than 1000 children were members of the Grazer Keplerspatzen. First conceived as pure boy choir, in further consequence girls and man voices were taken up to the choir community. Only with the integration of man voices Grazer Keplerspatzen could get the sound typical for today's appearances. There is excluding graduates of the BRG Keplerstrasse, who retained themselves their love for the choir singing and particularly to the choir community over the transformation from the boy to the man voice. These pupils, student and working people take care for the younger choir children at the annually common singing weeks. By the correct singing training, which all choir members receive, men as well as children, they gain techniques and routine very profitably for the choir sound.
By the intensive rehearsals and incessant structure work the choir is well-known far over Graz' boundaries - and that, although the potential of all singers recruits itself only from a school. Designated often as the "Wiener Sängerknaben von Graz", the choir denies a multiplicity of public and school appearances and is annually invited to appear in music festivals. Tours abroad led the choir, whose repertoire covers of sacred and secular choir literature of all eras, to France, Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Tschechien, Hungary and Romania. broadcast and television productions, as well as numerous recordings testify to the quality of the Grazer Keplerspatzen.
The big secret of the success of this choir, apart from the joy in the choir singing, is above all the intensively maintained choir community, which result not least from the annually spring singing days and the holidays singing weeks in the summer. |
