The well-known London based choir, Libera, will return to Saint Patrick’s Catholic Cathedral, Armagh on Friday 9th August, where they will hold a free concert premiering their new seasonal repertoire at 7.30pm. If you have never heard the unique, heavenly sound of LIBERA, then prepare yourself for something very special indeed.
The boys who make up the South London based vocal band Libera have been described as “normal” and “ordinary”. However, as their recordings and performances demonstrate, the music they produce is anything but. With shimmering, mystical chords and ecstatic harmonies they are unlike any other group you have ever heard. These are truly sounds to lift the soul.
Familiar to audiences across the world, the boys have a stunningly original sound, which is at once both ancient and modern. Their distinctive flowing white robes symbolise the traditional origins of their style – yet their music reaches across the generations to a new mainstream audience. Libera’s success in album charts around the world bears witness to the extraordinary appeal of this unique ‘boy band’. Enchanting audiences wherever they go, they have attracted an enthusiastic fan base in many countries, particularly the US and Canada, the UK, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and South Korea.
The group is well known to British audiences through TV appearances and staged concerts at venues as diverse as the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Grassington Festival, Abbey Road Studios and Arundel Cathedral. Recent appearances have included the Edinburgh Fringe festival, the National Concert Hall in Dublin and at St Peter’s Cathedral in Belfast. Libera have made many TV appearances including BBC-TV’s ‘Last Choir Standing’, on which the Libera boys were featured as guests. They were winners of the Saturday night show ‘When Will I Be Famous’ and had a whole documentary devoted to them on BBC-TV’s ‘Songs of Praise’. Other TV/Radio appearances have included BBC Breakfast and the Chris Evans Show. The boys are regularly to be heard on Classic FM, and last Christmas scored the top classical song download at iTunes. Libera regularly sing at events and services in cathedrals and churches like Buckfast Abbey and Westminster Cathedral.
In the US and Canada, Libera are known through their concert tours and TV appearances including a nationwide PBS special, which was filmed in Holland. In 2007 the boys had their US debut at the 30th Kennedy Center Honors, where they performed in front of the President and a hall full of celebrities – including Robert de Niro, Cameron Diaz, Diana Ross and Steve Martin. The boys were privileged to close the Kennedy Center Honours with a moving tribute to honoree Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. This was followed by Libera’s participation in the Papal Mass at the climax of Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to the USA in 2008. Performing to a capacity congregation of 65,000 at New York’s Yankee Stadium, Libera were the only British artists to take part in this historical event.
Libera have travelled across North America several times, appearing in venues as diverse as the Crystal Cathedral in California, the St Louis Basilica, St Paul and Minneapolis cathedrals, the Moody church in Chicago, the Riverside Church in NYC and other venues both secular and sacred from Texas to Toronto. Just recently they opened the annual Starkey Awards Gala in the Twin Cities, where they were featured artists on the same programme as Miley Cyrus and Meat Loaf.
In East Asia, the sounds of Libera are frequently heard in mainstream TV and radio programmes and their CD’s ride high in the classical and pop charts of countries like Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the Philippines. The boys have sung the music for several feature films and television programmes. The most recent tour packed out the major concert venues in Tokyo for 3 nights and the boys were feted by thousands of enthusiastic fans who queued for hours to meet the boys and collect autographs. During the recent tour in the Philippines, Libera topped the main album charts and sung to the major concert halls in Manila and Cebu crammed full with excitable fans.
Through their involvement in Libera, the boys have travelled the world, recorded movie soundtracks and CDs and served as backing singers to mega-stars. But, as one of the boys said, “The travelling and filming is fun but even if we didn’t go anywhere I’d still want to do it because I just love singing.”
Admission to the concert is free. For more information contact Armagh Tourist Information Centre on 028 3752 1800 or visit www.armagh.co.uk.