Founded in 1992, Lucerne Kantorei offers children from central Switzerland the opportunity to study voice and to sing in a professionally led choir. Members are provided with instruction individually tailored to their age range, as well as with a weekly private lesson in voice. This work takes place in basic and developmental choirs, which are sometimes divided into boys and girls; the ensembles include a large concert choir, chamber choirs, and a young men’s ensemble for singers between 14 and 20 whose voices have broken. The focus of their repertoire is sacred choral music from all eras, which they perform not only in liturgies held at the Jesuitenkirche but in choral concerts and for festival occasions. The various ensembles comprising the Lucerne Kantorei have performed at LUCERNE FESTIVAL, at the Davos Festival Young Artists in Concert series, and at the Bregenz Festival; child soloists are regularly selected to appear on opera stages throughout Switzerland and in neighboring countries. Since August 2000 Eberhard Rex has served as artistic director of the Lucerne Kantorei. He studied church music at the Trossingen Music Academy (Baden-Württemberg), specializing in the fields of organ (with Gerd Witte), conducting (with Manfred Schreier), and song (with Josef Sinz). While he was still a student he began to concentrate intensively on pedagogy and on teaching singing to children – a focus that he was soon able to put into practice as choral director of the Aurelius Boys’ Choir in Calw and with the Calw Girls’ Choir ARTEvocale. He has in addition conducted opera and oratorio projects and has taken part in various recordings for CD and radio.
July 2010