This November, 28 SCAS students and four former students will perform in the premiere of a major composition by international composer, Paul Mealor.

Choir director, Marie van Gend, said Mr Mealor is one of the great living vocal composers.

“He has become the main composer for the British Royal Family. He wrote the original music for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton,” she said.

The choir had performed Mr Mealor’s music at one of their vocal showcases and had taped the performance and put it on YouTube. Unbeknownst to them, concert organisers in New York were searching for choirs that could sing Mr Mealor’s challenging music and discovered the video of their performance.

Ms van Gend recalls the bizarre moment when she received an email inviting the SCAS Chamber Choir to sing at Carnegie Hall.

“I thought it was a hoax so I actually deleted the email! Then they contacted me again and I began to realise this was real,” she said.

The students were elated to learn that they were going to perform an original composition by one of their heroes, in arguably the greatest concert hall in the world, and that he was going to teach it to them and conduct it.

The piece is Mr Mealor’s ‘Requiem’ which looks at ‘the beauty of sacrifice’. It will be performed on November 11, Remembrance Day. 

The SCAS Chamber Choir received the music by Mr Mealor on Thursday, June 28. They were the first choir in the world to have seen the original composition.

“It’s the stuff of dreams,” Ms van Gend said. “This is not a choir of seasoned performers. Some of them are still learning to read music. This will stretch them enormously.”

The massed choir in New York will be made up of performers from around the world. 

“But these are the only school kids,” Ms van Gend explained. “The rest are adults. It’s utterly mind blowing.”