At 12 years old, Lance Castro So has already been to 11 countries and sang for the likes of Emperor Akihito of Japan and shared the stage with musician John Legend.
This isn’t surprising considering that, when he was 10, he independently decided to leave his family and live in a boarding school in Austria so he could be part of the Vienna Boys Choir.
Lance, an alto 2, was attending a summer camp in Shanghai (where his parents work) when the choir’s artistic director, Gerald Wirth, asked the boy if he wanted to part of the world’s oldest performing choir group.
He didn’t even need to audition.
“He immediately answered yes without consulting me and his dad,” his mom, Raquel, recalled one recent afternoon in Makati.
Lance was in Manila town to promote the choir’s Manila concert in November. The last time the group performed here was in 2004.
According to Raquel, she and her husband first heard their son’s singing voice when he was in fourth grade. “My husband and I are not musically inclined, that’s why I was really surprised when Lance sang at the Founder’s Day [of his school in Shanghai].”
Lance now lives in Palais Augarten, the 17th century palace and gardens which the VBC has called home since 1948.
It’s not exactly Hogwarts, but that’s not kept Lance from having a magical time.
He watches movies, plays drums and soccer with his choir mates during their free time, and eats his favorite ice cream (at least when his mentor allows him).
His best friends are two boys who also “get left behind in the dorm when everybody else is picked up by their parents on Saturday afternoon…I miss my family but I want to stay there because I love singing,” he said.
“Between 1998 and 2011, there have been at least five Filipino boys at the Vienna Boys Choir school, and we are very proud of them all,” says Tina Breckwoldt, spokesperson for the choir.
“There have been Filipino-Austrians in the past but never a Filipino citizen,” says Martin Lopez, an alumnus of Xavier School, which is organizing the VBC concert in Manila.
Lance has probably two or three more years with VBC. When asked if he will stay for the remaining years, his mom was quick to interrupt saying, “He’s coming home with us.”
VBC is divided into four touring choirs, each one named after famous Austrian composers: Bruckner, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert. A private and non-profit organization, it has around 100 members between the ages of 10 and 14.
Lance belongs to Bruckner, and their group of 22 will perform at the PICC Plenary Hall on Fri, Nov 11.
An earlier version of this story stated that Lance So was the first-ever Filipino to join the Vienna Boys Choir, a claim that was made during the press conference for the upcoming VBC concert in Manila. According to VBC, between 1998 and 2011, there have been at least five Filipino choir members. Data protection policy in Austria does not allow VBC to provide the names of the choir members nor their citizenship. According to the organizer of the VBC concert here, however, “there have been Filipino-Austrians in the past but never a Filipino citizen.”
