It is the best news possible.  Antioch swept first place in both the sacred and secular vocal groups for the 40th Annual Tolosa Choral Festival.  We could not be more excited or pleased.

At midnight, the lights to the large auditorium dimmed and they began announcing the winners of each of the categories.  They began with the “audience favorite”, followed by the childrens choirs.  Then, they announced the sacred category vocal groups.  When Antioch was announced as First Prize, we were all very happy and made all sorts of noise!  When they began announcing the 3rd place and 2nd place for the secular category, we became a bit nervous that we had not placed at all.  However, when they announced that we had won first prize, looks of shock and happiness were all around.

We received many compliments from the international panel of judges and festival organizers.  It appears we will be getting many more invitations for huge international festivals.

The bus ride home was filled with tears of joy and fun stories.  We shared the bus ride back to the hotel with the Cuban group, Exaudi.  They were extremely gracious and offered many congratulations.

It is now about 2am and we leave at 10am to sing for the finale as the winners of our categories.  After the Festival Final Concert and lunch in Tolosa, we will go to San Sebastian for our last concert in Spain.  We leave first thing on Monday morning and will be back in the states Monday afternoon.

Thank you all so much for following our blog throughout this trip.  We will update again soon when we have more pictures as well as some edited video from our trip.