About Chabalekei

Chabalekei is the swallow, the bird that comes back to the same eaves every spring. The children named the choir themselves in 2012, after a song they sang that year.

The choir began in 1998 as the Palace of Art’s Saturday singing class, ten children around a piano. Since 2012 the Körköm Foundation has paid for the teachers, and the choir has grown to sixty children in three groups.

The badge was stitched by the mothers for the first concerts in the cathedral: a note over three rows of risers, white, red and white, like the uniform.

Chabalekei sings in Iradi, Russian and Syriac, and every year learns one song in English for the foundation’s visitors.