Join us today at 11:15 for a 30 minute lunchtime recital performed by The CUE Choral Ambassadors. Admission to the recital is included in regular cathedral entry.
YouthCUE, a United States nonprofit charity organization, exists for the purpose of radically impacting the lives of students with the beauty and transcendence of excellent choral music. Founded in 1990 by Randolph Edwards, YouthCUE is an expansive cohort of hundreds of youth choir directors across the USA. The organization holds major choir festivals involving hundreds of students at a time, each performance being accompanied by full professional orchestra and livestreamed around the world. The organization’s most regular venue over the past 25 years is the Washington National Cathedral. YouthCUE’s mission is to equip youth choir directors with tools and resources to develop healthy choirs in the communities, churches, and schools in which they serve. Our purpose is to teach and instill the astonishing power of choral arts as a means of changing the world for the better. Sacred texts are often embedded in the choral music YouthCUE presents. Those passages, combined with beautifully crafted choral music, will enrich the young singers and remain with them for the rest of their lives. In our approach to students, we continually seek engagement spanning diverse cultural, racial, geographic, socio-economic, and religious lines. Our work with students also includes the development of leadership among the young.
The CUE Choral Ambassadors (CCA) is a chamber choir (16 singers) comprised of university music majors from across the USA. These students have learned their music on their own over the past four months and first began rehearsing as a group when we arrived in Dublin on July 21. The CCA’s Irish Cathedral Tour spans from July 21 though August 1. Christ Church (Dublin), St. Columb’s Cathedral (Derry), St. Mary’s Cathedral (Limerick), the Belfast Castle, the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Athlone are among our scheduled concerts. Numerous midday recitals, walk-in concerts and evensongs will be sung across the Emerald Isle. Our final concert of the tour will be held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin on July 31 at 8pm.
Randolph Edwards, CCA Conductor, is the founder of YouthCUE. Mr. Edwards has conducted mass choirs and full professional orchestras in over 150 YouthCUE events since 1995. A native of Texas, Randolph began conducting choirs at age 15 and has been a vocational church musician for the past 52 years. He has three adult children, Preston, Ashley and Kathryn, and two grandchildren, Faye and William.
Dr. Daniel Zamora is Artist in Residence at YouthCUE. He is a native of Mexico City, Mexico, where he began very early as a church accompanist. Daniel enjoys a distinguished career as a church musician and is equally at home on organ or piano. His colleagues know him as an accompanist extraordinaire on either instrument and always a pure joy to include in musical ventures. Daniel is father of two adult children, Dan and Michael.
