The Golden Gate Boys Choir & Bellringers

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touring with the ggbc

Each summer the GGBC sponsors a concert tour for the Master Singers and Ringmaster groups. The boys have an opportunity to earn the funds required for tour through the choir's annual Benefit Drawing, and some boys pay for their entire tour cost through this annual appeal to the greater community.

Since 1989, the choir's annual tours for the older singers and ringers has taken them to the east coast of the USA and Canada; to the Pacific Northwest of the USA and Canada; to Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Austria; to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and the Philippines. Performances have included the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica; the United Nations; the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.; the White House Ellipse, the Bundehaus in Berne, Switzerland, to name a few. Domestic tours are usually two weeks in length and international tours are often three weeks long. Shorter tours of several days length are taken by the younger boys when enrollment allows, such as the Disneyland trip which several past Minnesinger groups have undertaken.

As members of the world-wide boy choir federation, Pueri Cantores, the GGBC often attends the regional or world congresses which are sponsored by the federation, such as the 1996 Congress in Salzburg, Austria, or the 1993 Congress in Rome, Italy. At the congress in Rome, our boys sang with ten thousand other singers in Saint Peter's Basilica for the papal mass on New Year's Day, an inspiring moment in our choir's history. The GGBC is known at home and abroad for its hospitality to visiting boy and children's choirs. We have entertained or hosted more than twenty visiting choirs, including boy or children's choirs from Great Britain, France, Italy, Denmark, Germany, Slovakia, Japan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Texas, and California. We have been able to exchange return visits with a number of choirs we have hosted in San Francisco.

During December of 2006, the choir traveled to Italy, and during the summer of 2007 toured New Zealand and Hawaii.