Boys are, by nature, wigglers and squirmers, often focused on investigating their surrounding reality. How to capture those qualities was clearly on display, as the “Drakies” (as they are known to their many friends) invested all that energy into a nonstop series of items featuring a battery of native drums and assorted other instruments to accompany their singing and dancing. “High energy” begs to describe the result. It is said that youth is wasted on the young – but not these youths! And this, after a six-hour bus ride from San Jose on the same day.

As though to make the point that they are fully capable of concentrated non-movement, the Drakies also presented Robert Schumann’s Zigeunerleben with fine, unified choral tone and excellent German, and a setting of the Bach chorale Komm, süsser Tod by Knut Nystedt and Erik Ericksen that defied traditional harmony with on-the-spot individual creative, aleatoric content that began and resolved each phrase into the properly traditional harmonic chord. If you think that is a simple thing to do, try it sometime! To plumb the emotional depths of King David as he learned of his son Absalom’s death, the choir presented Joshua Shank’s setting of When David Heard with sympathetic reverence and riveting focus.

But what makes the 40-member touring Drakies so special is their sharing of native South African culture from (among others): Zulu, Xhosa, XiTsonga, Swati and Afrikaans peoples. Individual boys performed and danced, at times exhorting the well-populated audience to join them in celebration. Astounding is the choir’s iconic Gum Boot Dance that never fails to leave the audience gasping in admiration. Not a shy boy in the lot.

A transition from a long-term music director to a successor is a risky matter, requiring just the right candidate to be chosen. Both organizations appearing on this beautiful Spring evening faced that challenge, and triumphed spectacularly. When Christian Ashley-Botha, who directed the Drakies for many years, retired, his successor needed to have an unique skill set to succeed. They got their man. In his three years at the helm, Johann van der Sandt has further refined the basic Drakie sound, pumped the high-energy cycle, and delivered a presentation that differs only in director-preferred repertoire.

Similarly, the Los Angeles Children’s Choir, founded by Rebecca Thompson in 1986, needed an outstanding successor, and found her in Anne Tomlinson, who in her tenure has expanded LACC’s horizons and goals, most recently adding a changed voice male ensemble conducted by Steven Kronauer. LACC’s list of accomplishments since its founding virtually exceeds programme space.

LACC’s Concert Choir sang items both familiar to their audiences (Hoj, Hura Hoj by Otmar Macha and Duke Ellington’s It don’t mean a thing) to an American fiddle tune, Sail Away, featuring Cheryl Scheidemantle as fiddler, and chorister Leopoldo Galván on the spoons. Both choirs joined, at concert’s conclusion, in two South African items, including the humorous Amabhayesikili, complete with dance gestures, after the briefest joint rehearsal beforehand. LACC moms provided both choirs with delicious potluck offerings to provide fuel for all that energy.