Pacific Boychoir, Kevin Fox, director

Pacific Boychoir made its San Francisco Symphony debut in 2002 in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and is heard with the SFS on the Grammy-winning recording of that work conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, as well as the Grammy-winning recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8. Based in Oakland, the Pacific Boychoir Academy was founded in 1998 with six boys and today involves more than 160 boys in seven choirs. In addition to an after-school training program, the PBA operates a day school and is the only choir school in the Western US. Pacific Boychoir has performed with the Berkeley Symphony, American Bach Soloists, Youth Orchestra of the Americas, Lithuanian State Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Brasil, the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, Johannesburg Festival Orchestra, Vienna Boys Choir, and many other ensembles. The choir has toured throughout the US and to Australia, New Zealand, Eastern and Western Europe, South America, South Africa, China, and Russia. The choir’s recordings feature Bach’s Cantata 150, Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, and two of Bach’s “Lutheran” Masses. For That Promised Land, a recording of American Spirituals, the Boychoir was honored by the Friends of Negro Spirituals and the Academy of Gospel Music Awards; most recently the choir released Show Me the Way, its second collection of spirituals from America’s choral heritage. This season Pacific Boychoir performs with the San Francisco Symphony, Oakland East Bay Symphony, and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. Kevin Fox, Founding Artistic Director of the Pacific Boychoir Academy, holds a degree in music from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where he received the Lipsky Prize for outstanding scholarship in choral studies. He studied music at Oxford University and choral conducting at Westminster Choir College in Princeton. Mr. Fox worked for the American Boychoir and has sung with the choirs of Trinity Church New Haven, Trinity Church Princeton, American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Chorale, and the Grace Cathedral Choir in San Francisco, where he also has served as Interim Assistant Choirmaster. 

(January 2013)