High note as Meath soprano (11) joins the Vienna Boys' Choir

AN 11-YEAR-OLD boy from Dunboyne, Co Meath, has become the first Irish person to be accepted into the prestigious Vienna Boys’ Choir.

Evan Pyne was invited to join the world-famous choral group in February after a week-long audition in the Austrian capital.

The 500-year-old choir, which mainly selects boys from Austria, comprises 100 choristers, aged 10-14, and has worked with the likes of Mozart and Schubert.

Pyne, who attended Dunboyne Primary School until his family moved to Qatar last September, is something of a musical maestro, having already won a string of awards and scholarships for playing piano and trumpet.

“We are thrilled for Evan as he embarks on what should be a wonderful adventure. Little did we think a child of ours would be leaving us so early on in his life,” his parents, Alena and John Pyne, said.

“While we miss him terribly, we also know that he is doing what he enjoys and he should thrive in that environment.”

Evan started learning piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin in 2008 after completing two years of pre-instrumental tuition at the academy, and before long he added the trumpet to his repertoire.

In 2009, he started training as a boy soprano with the Piccolo Lasso choir in Dublin, under the musical direction of Ite O’Donovan.

As part of the Dublin choir, he performed at Westminster Cathedral in London in 2009 and 2010, and last year sang in a choral festival before Pope Benedict in Rome. In January, the Vienna Boys’ Choir performed a New Year’s concert in the Qatari capital of Doha, which the family attended.

Evan’s mother, an accomplished pianist and harpist, said her son was left spellbound by the performance. “That night, before he went to sleep, he asked me is there any way he could join the Vienna choir.”

A day later, she organised an audition for him with one of the choir’s directors at Doha’s opera house, after which he was invited to a trial in Vienna. Pyne was accepted and joined the choir’s boarding school in Vienna three weeks ago, where he will be until 2015.

The artistic director of the choir, Gerald Wirth, said: “Evan is extremely musical, and quite a determined young man – perfect for the choir. We are expecting him to bring his talent and his personality to bear. He will go far.”

Pyne is apparently a distant relative of Austria’s most famous singing family, the von Trapps, the subject of the film The Sound of Music.