Pupils' blazer lapels sag with enamel badges for choir, language-learning, mentoring younger pupils and so on.
In December, Rawalpindi's St. Joseph's Cathedral, the seat of Islamabad's Catholic diocese, held three Christmas Masses in Urdu and English, and showcased caroling by its popular English-language choir, now in its third year.
Michael Jackson wants a children's choir that knows sign language.
But even the choir's rendering of English-language hymns carried an echo of distant Pacific islands.
Besides using percussion from around the world, Eidelman treated the choir as percussion, with the Klingon language translation for "to be, or not to be" ("taH pagh, taHbe") being repeated in the background.
Walking on foot for days to reach remote areas in Jonglei and Lakes, states known for frequent inter-communal clashes, the choir chanted songs of peace in different languages.
Trickier still would be the challenge of finding a dance language that was responsive to the choir's Zulu culture without looking tackily "tribal".
Choral music was one of the first musics humans made together, and there are, appropriately, as many different types of choirs as there are languages and dialects.
'RINGS' CYCLE -- Two choirs singing in invented languages, a Norwegian fiddle, Japanese drums and rattling chains will be heard when the Academy Award-winning composer Howard Shore, left, leads the Columbus Symphony Orchestra on Friday in the United States premiere live performance of music from "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.
The choir has been a staple of the French-language Mass at Holy Name, which is at West 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, for 31 years.
Offerings that will continue next school year are art/ceramics, speech and debate, world language, communications/newspaper, drama, yearbook, orchestra, band and choir.
