“It’s quite simple, really,’’ he says. “I did it for my family. Traveling so often and for such long periods is fine for a while, maybe a longer while if you’re a single person. But I have a family. My wife and I have two young children. And I wanted a job that would allow me to spend more time with my family, to watch my children grow, to be there. We wanted to be closer to my wife’s family back here in the United States. Our oldest daughter is beginning elementary school. And then I learned that PALS was in need of an artistic director. The timing was perfect.’’
That’s because Alysoun Kegel, who led PALS for the last four years, left recently to study choral conducting at Carnegie Mellon University.
“He’s not just talented, as a director, and conductor, and singer too,’’ PALS executive director Jill Carrier says of Icochea Icochea. “He also is such a likable person that he has great connections internationally and is so well respected. We look forward to that good will carrying over to PALS.’’
The Vienna Boys Choir is made up of four choirs with equal standing, each named after a classical master - Bruckner, Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert. Icochea Icochea and his choir, the Schubert, maintained a busy schedule for up to four months a year, and they visited 27 countries, singing before the rich and famous and sometimes just the plain old lucky local parish that managed to score a Vienna Boys Choir charitable performance.
He says his goal here is no less ambitious and that he wants to make his new choir as good as the one he just left. “The PALS Children’s Chorus of Brookline will become the world’s next great children’s chorus,’’ he says. “I promise.’’
