Thank You, Argentina

If you’ve ever come to one of our concerts throughout the academic year, you’ll know that the Holy Cross College Choirs have quite the following. Whether it’s Lessons and Carols or Family Weekend, the College Choirs can always count on a responsive and excited audience; but of course, this is not something we take for granted. As chair of the choir for next year, I understand that the quality of our performances is what helps ensure a high audience turnout. In the end, we are incredibly blessed and grateful to have such a supportive, enthusiastic community on Mount Saint James. However, when we came to Argentina, I wasn’t sure if we would receive the kind of love and feedback from our Argentinian audiences as we always get back at home; after all, we were traveling to the other end of the world where we didn’t have our solid base of friends and family. But when we had our first concert at the Stock Exchange Building in Buenos Aires, I was pleasantly surprised. Not only was the concert sold-out, but the audience was extremely active and supportive; I could see many audience members grooving in their seats to “Uptown Funk” and some were even singing along to “Brindisi” from La Traviata. Our second major concert at the Cordoba Cultural Center received the same level of enthusiasm and response. Apart from a standing ovation and even an encore, several audiences members took the time to come up to us following the concert to commend our performance. For example, one gentleman came up to a group of us and said that our performance helped put a smile on his face after his father had been in the hospital that week. Another audience member, a voice teacher from Paris, France who had just happened to stumble upon our concert that evening, complimented our technique and praised our performance. Overall, everyone in the tour choir would agree with me that the Argentinian audiences were some of the best audiences we have ever performed for. However, it wasn’t their cheers and “bravos” that made them the “best” — it was the genuine love and happiness they displayed towards us. Thank you, Argentina for being such an appreciative and loving audience. 

-Adam Ouellet ’16

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