The Mirabitur Youth Choir, under the direction of Simone Attard, has just returned from Italy after singing at the Vatican, St Gregory VII church and St Paul’s Basilica Fuori le Mura in Rome, as well as at the Basilica Inferiore of St Francis in Assisi.
Attard set up the Mirabitur Youth Choir in 2010 on a voluntary basis and holds singing lessons every week. Her aim is to encourage children from an early age to appreciate music and to instil in them a love for classical music by combining it with modern music.
The choir is made up of 25 children, all of whom play a musical instrument.
The young choir recently performed childrens’ choruses in Carmina Burana and Porgy and Bess, organised by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts, with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra and Wayne Marshall.
The choir also sang the children’s parts in Jenkins’ The Peacemakers, directed by the composer himself, again with the MPO, and in the opera I Pagliacci at the Manoel Theatre, also with the national orchestra.
In 2011, the Mirabitur Youth Choir was the first Maltese choir to achieve the Golden Diploma for Malta in the fourth Malta International Choir Competition and Festival, qualifiying for the 2012 World Choir Games.
The choir after a performance.Attard, who has 31 years’ teaching experience in singing and pianoforte, is tenor Joseph Calleja’s pianist.
She has coached the Manoel Theatre choir for 10 operatic productions, soloists and choristers for more than 20 musicals and is the foundress and director of Kor Mirabitur, the adult version of the Mirabitur Youth Choir.
Attard was the first musical director of the Malta Children’s Choir and founded the Johann Strauss School of Music Youth Choir.
She has worked as a teacher and, later, as an assistant head at the Johann Strauss School of Music for 20 years, and is currently an assistant head at St Nicholas College Naxxar Boys’ Secondary and a part-time musician with the MPO.
Children aged eight to 13 who are interested in joining the choir, which is free, should e-mail simone.attard@hotmail.com.