Juniors Danny DeBare and Elijah Levy rocked the house at the Greek Theater, performing  in the finale of Beethoven’s ninth symphony with their choir Pacific Boychoir Academy on Sept. 25th.

“I think it is fantastic, there are amazing opportunities in the Bay Area for students,” acapella teacher Joe Piazza said.

The concert, conducted by Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, kicked off the beginning of the UC Berkeley  performance season.

“There’s four parts to the symphony and the chorus doesn’t actually come in until the second half of the fourth movement,” DeBare said. “We sat on stage for about an hour or so before we actually got to start singing.”

DeBare and Levy have been performing with Pacific Boychoir Academy for seven and a half years. Their biggest audiences are generally when they perform the  National Anthem, but this was their biggest concert audience with 8,500 people.

They joined the UC Chamber Chorus and The San Francisco Girls Chorus.  Overall, the choir contained about 200 people.

Levy said the choir rehearsed for about a month and the hardest part was learning the music.

“We had to sing it in front of our director with little to no mistakes in terms of words and notes to be eligible, so that was very challenging.” Levy said.

It may have been challenging, but according to SFGate, “the sound they raised was glorious indeed.”

DeBare said that he normally does not listen to classical music, but by being forced to sit down and learn the music, he got a new appreciation for it.

“Although I did complain a lot about having to sit through an hour on cold metal bleachers, it really was a phenomenal seat,” DeBare said, “I got to watch Dudamel conduct with his riveting facial expressions and passion that exudes no other conductor. It was a once in a lifetime experience.”