An alumnus of nearly fifteen years reflects on how the discipline, the languages, and the love of the stage he found here carried him all the way to Paris.
When Alexandre Grand'Pierre stepped onto the blocks at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games as the highest-ranked swimmer for Team Haiti, he was a long way from the risers of the Atlanta Boy Choir. But ask him where the discipline behind that moment began, and part of the answer starts here.
Alexandre's last performance with the Choir was more than fourteen years ago. He has not forgotten a note of it. “Being exposed to rich classical and contemporary choral pieces at such a young age was one of the greatest gifts I have ever received in my life,” he says.
He traces his appreciation for travel and culture straight back to the repertoire he mastered here. Singing in German, Spanish, Old English, French, Hebrew, and Italian became second nature, and the venues the Choir visited, he says, were just as marvelous as the melodies he still cherishes.
Then there is the discipline. “The discipline we trained with has followed me through my academic studies, my athletic career, and well into my professional life,” Alexandre says. “The determination for excellence, both on and off the stage, was unshakable, and it has always stood out across the many organizations I have been part of since.”
That determination is easy to see. Born in Atlanta, and once a child with asthma, Alexandre became a record-setting breaststroker at The Walker School and Bowdoin College, a four-time NESCAC champion in the 50-yard breaststroke, and the holder of Haitian national records in the 50, 100, and 200-meter breaststroke and the 200-meter individual medley. In 2024 he set a new Haitian record at the Doha World Aquatics Championships and won gold at the CCCAN Championships, qualifying for Paris as the third member of his family to represent Haiti at the Olympic Games. He graduated from Bowdoin in 2025 with a double major in Computer Science and Digital Computational Studies, and today completes an internship with World Aquatics in Lausanne, Switzerland.
This is what the Atlanta Boy Choir means when it says a boy enters as a student and leaves as an artist, a leader, and a person of character. The stage is only where it starts. What a chorister builds here, the discipline, the standard, the willingness to master something genuinely difficult, is his to carry anywhere. For Alexandre, anywhere has meant concert halls, lecture halls, and an Olympic pool.
Now he is coming back to where it began. “Reconnecting with the Choir will be a dream come true,” he says, “and I cannot wait to share the gift of music with the Atlanta community and the world once again.”
Alexandre's is not the only story in his family. His younger brother Raphael, also an Atlanta Boy Choir alumnus, is training toward a place at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Stay tuned to learn more about Raphael's story this fall as we continue featuring our alumni around the world who are still singing.
Every chorister who walks through our doors is the beginning of a story like this one. To follow along, or to add your son's voice to ours, visit atlantaboychoir.org.
