Four students from Toronto’s St. Michael’s Choir School have advanced to the championship round of a provincial competition — and they aren’t a singing quartet.

St. Michael’s Choir School kicked off its Christmas season Dec. 5 with a free outdoor concert of secular and sacred music in Dundas Square in downtown Toronto.

Sacred music meets the most sacred place in the world next month as the MOSAIC vocal ensemble and the St. Michael’s Choir School (SMCS) alumni choir embark on their first performance pilgrimage. 

It was as if the sounds of Heaven descended upon Toronto when the Sistine Chapel choir performed at St. Michael's Cathedral Sept. 26.

Despite more than 900 signatures on a student-led petition demanding the reinstatement of Dr. Jerzy Cichocki, St. Michael’s Choir school is standing firm in a decision to fire its long-time conductor of the senior choir.

Since St. Michael's Choir School began pressing albums in the 1970s, those purchasing the choral soundtracks were much like the students – members of an exclusive club.

Is music part of the missionary activity of the Church? Or does it remain part of her internal life, as it were, reserved to the worship of God?

TORONTO - For many Torontonians, regardless of religion, the St. Michael’s Choir School Christmas concert marks the beginning of the excitement and anticipation surrounding the Christmas season.

TORONTO - One of Michael Burgess's final requests was to have St. Michael's Choir School participate at his funeral Mass. With hundreds of mourners packing Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church on Oct. 5, that request was granted.

In the end, after 70, 80, 90 years on the planet, chances are the people you will have known best, longest and most thoroughly will be your brothers and sisters. They are the people who came with you into the world out of the same womb.

TORONTO - Very soon church choirs around the world will have 900 manuscripts of music, most of it lost, forgotten and long out of print, available for free download from the St. Michael’s Choir School web site. The music, almost all of it liturgical and most of it set to Latin texts, was written by Msgr. John Edward Ronan, founder of Toronto’s St. Michael’s Choir School.

TORONTO - Each year, across the Toronto Catholic District School Board, Grade 2 boys take part in a yearly ritual, as adjudicators from St. Michael's Choir School visit their classrooms and listen carefully to the small, unformed voices that may one day make up the ranks of one of the finest music schools in the world.