The beginning of the choir's work brought together members who, before coming to Canada, were members of our famous choirs, who gained experience in world competitions and sang on the most famous world stages, but also members who did not have the opportunity to gain such experience. The name of the choir symbolizes the very beginning of Serbian musical creativity, because Kyr Stefan the Serb is the first Serbian medieval composer known to us so far. One of the greatest treasures in the existing written documentation of Kyr Stefan the Serb is the church song Ninja sili nebesnije which, six centuries later, the choir has been performing since its first public performance on January 27, 2001, at the Saint Sava celebration in the Saint Sava Church.
The choir’s basic mission has become quite clear and is perhaps best expressed in the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Colossians (3:16), which says: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” Therefore, glorifying God, the choir participates in services at the Saint Sava Church in Toronto, and since Pascha 2001, has been singing the Divine Liturgies of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Basil the Great, Vespers and Lenten Vespers, as well as participating in wedding ceremonies. Over time, the choir’s repertoire has expanded from the works of Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac to the works of other composers of Orthodox music. The choir also participates in services at the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Milton, and has performed in Toronto, Milton, Ottawa, Kitchener, Niagara, Whitby and Hamilton in Canada, in Chicago, Boston, Portland and New York in the United States, London, Stockholm and Belgrade in Europe and in Accra, Nazareth, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in the Holy Land – Israel, fulfilling its mission as an ambassador of Serbian culture. At the “Vidovdan Choirs Assembly” in Belgrade in 2003, the Kyr Stefan the Serb Choir successfully represented the entire North American Serbian emigration.
The Kyr Stefan the Serb Choir is honoured, with the blessing of His Grace Bishop of Canada Georgije in 2011, to be accepted and officially recognized as the choir of the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Canada.
The Kyr Stefan the Serb Choir decided to adopt May 10th as its feast day, the day when the relics of Saint Sava were burned in 1594 in Belgrade, at Vracar.
