Miami had a very diverse group of boys, but we learned to work together, and in many cases, became genuine friends

Being in the Miami Boys Choir from 1997 to 2003 was a formative musical experience, and I’m forever grateful to Yerachmiel Begun for all he did for me. I gained a great deal of experience both on stage and in the studio, learning how to sing, dance, and harmonize. Those are skills I never lost, and I still sing those Miami songs with my children at the Shabbos table — “Menuchah Vesimchah,” “Ki Ata Hu,” “Yaaleh V’yavoh,” and many others. In fact, on my new wedding album with the Freilach Band, Sing It, we featured six MBC songs. (See if you can spot them!) The great friendships from the choir days also live on. Miami had a very diverse group of boys, but we learned to work together, and in many cases, became genuine friends. I had many solos with MBC, baruch Hashem, and one of my memorable performances was as a kid singing “Rachem” with Yaakov Shwekey on the Miami 25 live album. That show was videoed in 2001, way before YouTube was invented. Once YouTube came on to the scene in 2005 and the video was uploaded, someone told me, ‘You know your clip with Shwekey has thousands of views?’ I said, “What’s YouTube?”

—Mordechai Shapiro

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 886)