Ragazzi Boys Chorus Presents "Flight!"

REDWOOD CITY, CA (28 May 2019) — Inspired by its upcoming tours to Mexico and Colorado, the acclaimed Ragazzi Boys Chorus ends the season with Flight! Featuring music that celebrates flying free, the stars, airplanes, and even bees, this spring concert allows the young singers (aged 8 to 18) to soar to new heights on the wings of their tremendous training and talent. Ragazzi’s Avanti, Concert Group, and Young Men’s Ensemble will each perform, with a special presentation of composer Christopher Tin’s theme music for Civilizations VI set to lyrics by Leonardo da Vinci. Bay Area audience members will have a chance to celebrate the boys’ artistry before they embark on their tours. Flight! will be presented 5:00pm, Sunday, June 9 at Aragon High School Performing Arts Center, 900 Alameda de las Pulgas, San Mateo. For tickets (Advance: $12 General Child, $20 General Adult, $29 Reserved / Door: $15 General Child, $23 General Adult, $32 Reserved) and information, visit www.ragazzi.org or call 650-342-8785.

Among the pieces performed in this flight themed concert will be an a cappella version of Blackbird by Paul McCartney, Sogno di Volare (The Dream of Flight) by Christopher Tin, Flight by Kim André Arnesen, Flying Free by Don Besig, Swingle Singers’ arrangement of Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sisi Ni Moja (We Are One) by Jacob Narverud, and Imagine by John Lennon. In preparation for Ragazzi’s Mexico tour, groups will also be performing a selection from Responsorios para los Maitines de la Santísima Trinidad by Antonio Juanas, a Baroque composer who was creating works in the late 1700s for cathedral professional choirs in Mexico, which were enjoying popularity similar to that in Europe during the same era.

Sogno di Volare (The Dream of Flight) was written by American composer Christopher Tin in 2016 as the official title theme for popular videogame Civilization VI. Adapting Leonardo da Vinci’s notes on flight into song lyrics, Tin uses rousing rhythms to portray what he calls “the essence of flight.” Written by Paul McCartney, with a guitar accompaniment inspired by Bach’s Bourrée in E minor, Blackbird was released on the Beatles’s self-titled 1968 album. Inspired by the prevalent racial tensions of the ‘60s in the United States, the song was a symbolic signal of support for the Civil Rights Movement. A beautiful song of freedom, it conveys that even in darkness, one should always try to arise and fly.

Marked by a rapid and chaotic changing sound, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee evokes the tumultuous flying pattern of the bee. Composed in 1899, this orchestral interlude was originally written for Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan.

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 250 singers from over 100 schools in 30+ 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, Symphony Silicon Valley, Masterworks Chorale, and the Stanford University Symphonic Chorus among others. The group has toured throughout the United States and internationally. In 1999, Ragazzi was honored for its contribution to the San Francisco Symphony’s triple Grammy Award-winning recording of Stravinsky’s Perséphone, and has five CDs available: A Holiday Collection, Canciones de Alabanza, Magnificat: My Spirit Rejoices, Splendors of the Italian Baroque, and I Dream A World.