An international tune could be heard coming from the St. Peter’s Cathedral in Vienna, Austria during Spring Break.

Bud Clark, music department head, conducted an international honors choir made up of 48 students March 21.

“I had two former students named Lance Burnett and Mindy Burnett, who both majored in music [at Southern], ask me if I would come to Vienna and direct the performance,” Clark said. “He had this idea to pull students from other Christian schools, and to get the four best singers from each of these schools together to play in the St. Peter’s Cathedral.”

The schools were from Germany, Russia, Spain, Czech Republic, Pakistan, Hungary and Austria. These students represented students from Canada, the United States, Switzerland, China, Australia, Venezuela, the Philippines, South Korea, Germany, Belgium, Hungary and South Africa.

“These were a wonderful bunch of kids,” Clark said. “In addition to being good singers, they were all-around great kids.”

The performance attracted a “packed” crowd.

“It was standing room only in the church,” Clark said. “It was advertised throughout the region as a concert setting.”

Music performed at the concert included works from American composers.

“We did a variety of things,” Clark said. “We did music from composers in the Renaissance all the way up to the spirituals in the 20th century. [It was] pretty much a wide variety of music.”

Though the concert was a success, the choir had very little and limited rehearsal time.

“The kids got the music in advance,” Clark said. “In all, I think we had only 10 hours of rehearsal before we performed.”

Clark said the church was an ideal place in which to hold such a performance.

“It’s a beautiful cathedral inside,” he said. “It was very ornate architecture. It was very Baroque period architecture. It had beautiful acoustics, and prior to us singing, you could hear the mass and brand new pipe organ that they put in.”

Clark said the sights and sounds of Vienna are like “stepping back in time.”

“The cobblestones are still standing on the narrow roads in some parts of the city,” he said. “They take a lot of pride in the history of the city. It was a

very beautiful place.”

Though this was the first concert of its kind, Clark said it will not be the last.

“We wanted to see how this was going to work and how much interest would be shown,” he said. “All the music directors that went were just really impressed with the crowd turnout and they do want to do this as a yearly event.”

Clark said this was a unique experience.

“It was just a wonderful experience because the kids all got a chance to bond together quite a bit,” Clark said. “It wasn’t just a wonderful experience musically, it was an opportunity for me to meet kids from all over the world and work together.”