Libera Concert 2013

Growing up to the music of Josh Groban, Charlotte Church (before she became a pop-rock mom), Enya, Sarah Brightman, Andrea Brocelli, Gregorian, Celtic Women…you get the picture…it’s only proper that I get excited about this concert as Libera is the closest I can have to experiencing the voices of the Vienna Boys Choir. I mean, it’s basically the same concept of young boys being recruited to sing before their voices get to their awkward phase and they start talking in baritone voices. Libera may have been formed not too long ago as compared to the Vienna Boys Choir, but at least their group reaches our shores for concerts.  

Last October 29, I was mortified when my brother forgot to insert the SD card in his cam…but thank God for internal memory I managed to take a few photos. It took a while before I figured out how to transfer those photos to my laptop...thus the late post. You see I’ve been pretty excited about going to the Libera concert for the longest time, so long in fact that I’ve forgotten about the concert until a week before the date. It could've been chaos had no one reminded me. The first Libera concert I went to was last 2011, and this year I saw the kids grow a little older and they even have new recruits. Let me tell you, this is the only concert I’ve been to that gave me goose bumps in almost all of their songs.

They’ve been coming to do concerts for the past six years I think…and this is mostly because of the Philippine-British friendship month. I tell you, if you have not heard angels sing, then this is your best bet to hearing them. Their music plays mostly to the soul, uplifting your spirits as they raise their voices higher and higher. It’s like listening to a violin sing, swaying from one string to another, making sounds of elation. At times they would sing in unison, reaching for the top notes, but then out on the corner a single boy does his solo and you’re blown away at the height of his echoes. Some songs such as Voca Me and Sanctus leaves you with a haunting feel, like walking on an old misty pavement with the ghost of a little boy following you with his voice that seem to bellow from beyond our world. It makes you wonder where they get the power to reach these notes because taking it from their stomachs seems insufficient from what I was hearing. To say it simply, the music they produce with their voices is without doubt ethereal.

It saddens me that of the two concerts I’ve been to, it wasn’t a full house…I suppose that’s because this kind of music is followed by a small niche, but that doesn’t stop them from coming back; a fact that I am genuinely glad about. The next time they do a concert, do yourself a favour and experience this kind of concert at least once in your life because this is something I plan on doing on a yearly basis…that is, if they do the concert here again. For a Php520 ticket, it’s like you give your soul a two-hour journey into the heavens to hear a choir of angels serenade you with songs of soul-stirring jubilation. Also, I love the play of instruments in their In Dulci Jubilo piece--kudos to they guy who played the flute!