Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale

Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale is a boys' choir and men's chorale based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, currently under the direction of Jeffery R. Smith. They are known as "America's Ambassadors of Song" and are considered to be one of the best boys choirs in the world. They have performed in concert venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, the Kimmel Center, Notre Dame de Paris, King's College Cathedral, and Philadelphia's Academy of Music.

After six years at the Frankford High School in North Philadelphia, Robert G. Hamilton founded what is today Philadelphia Boys Choir in 1968. He took his originally High School Choir to the Music Educator's National Convention in Atlantic City in March 1963, and by the summer of 1964 had organized a 30-day tour with 90 singers to Scandinavia as the "Ambassadors of Song." In 1965 the choir sang at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, along with a men's chorus organized by Hamilton. By 1968 he was conducting the Philadelphia Boy's Choir, under the purview of the Board of Education, but moved to an independent group later that year.

Two years later, he added a Men's Chorale to expand available repertoire. He remained the artistic director for the choir's next 37 years. In 1968 they launched the concert tour to Mexico, the first of many. The Choir has performed premieres of works under the batons of Maestros Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Klaus Tennstedt and Wolfgang Sawallisch in concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Riccardo Muti hailed the boys as a "gem" at the performance of the concert version of Puccini's Tosca with internationally acclaimed soloists Carol Vaness, Giuseppe Giacomini, Giorgio Zancanaro and the Westminster Symphonic Choir. During a visit to the Soviet Embassy during the Cold War, the Soviet Embassy said "their voices are a treasure of art" and viewed them highly in bettering understanding between the Soviet Union and the United States.

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