Kinder- & Jugendsingakademie Graz - Austria
One of the oldest secular Austrian boarding high schools (since 1854), the HIB in Graz with its attached Singing-Academy offers its pupils a comprehensive vocal education.
The main emphasis is in preparing its ensembles for classical choir and orchestra concerts, e.g. “Brahms-Requiem 2015”. The singing pupils from Graz participate regularly in operas and musical productions. On their international tours to such countries as Finland, China Spain, Italy, Belgium, Latvia, Switzerland, USA, Germany, Hungary, France, Estonia, Luxemburg and Russia, the young singers from Graz try to build a bridge from the rich Austrian choir tradition to international contemporary music.
The speciality of the singing pupils of Graz is to serenade celebrities.
They sang a song for the Holy Father in Rome, the European parliament, 3 Chinese ministers, the Queen of Belgium, trolls in Norway, the Football world champions, many European presidents, Oscar winners, and more. Always looking for unusual projects they took part successfully in a TV Casting show this year!
Conductor Maria Fuerntratt
Maria Fuerntratt has been the Artistic Director of the Singing-Academy since
1995 and has taught choir pedagogy at the Music University as senior lecturer in Graz since 2007. As a convinced music- and singing-educationalist she won the national pedagogy award (Pädagogischer Panther), Styrian folk culture award, the Antoni Martorell Premio (Vatican), long-service gold medal for Austrian choir merits. The Japanese Television NHK, Chinese CCTV, British BBC, Austrian TV all produced portraits about Maria Fuerntratt and she has gained international and national concert- and jury-member-experiences.