We will upload video clips every day, matching the planned concerts and other events, reviews of past festival days, but also greetings of the invited guest choirs. This page will be updated daily, so it’s worth taking a look at it regularly.
Next year we will be back live! #seeyounextyear
Beginning of the festival
The time has come! Today would have been the day on which we received the participating choirs as our guests in Dresden – with great excitement and curiosity, especially from the host families who wanted to offer the young singers a home for a week…
But to soften the disappointment today a bit, we would like to announce that our festival will take place in ONE YEAR! The festival will be postponed to: April 26 to May 3 in 2021! Read more…
City Tour #1 Dresden Frauenkirche
Today we will present you the first part of our virtual city tour to the places of our festival events. The Church of Our Lady – a special landmark of the city and a place of encounters and to “build bridges”.
The impression of the church interior fascinates artists and listeners alike. Every concert here becomes a special experience and remains in the guests’ memories for a long time. The concert in the Church of Our Lady has been an integral part of the festival’s history since the beginning and is therefore a tradition.
How we would have loved to surprise you today with a flashmob in the beautiful city centre of Dresden! How much fun and joy the choirs would have had again this year!
Surely some of you would have spontaneously decided to buy some of the last remaining tickets for the concert in the Church of Our Lady in the evening.
Today is the day – the first concert evening would have taken place! Excitement, stage fright, anticipation of a special concert.
Our guests from South Korea, New Zealand, Latvia, Belarus and Austria as well as the host, the Philharmonic Children’s Choir Dresden, would have introduced themselves to the Dresden audience with mainly sacred works.
See and hear how the voice diversity of our previous guests has fulfilled the Church of Our Lady.
Workshop Day
Today a special form of singing together would have taken place – trying out new things, listening to and learning from each other in the big joint workshop.
Each choir would teach a prepared song to the other singers in a playful way. We would also have rehearsed diligently for the world premiere piece together…
Colourful, enchanting and fantastic would probably have been the encounter party today. According to the motto: participate and try everything!
Somewhere there is always a song being sung… The students of the Fachhochschule Dresden, who had dedicated themselves to the planning of the party, would probably have made it a highlight of the festival week again!
City Tour #2 Dresden Kulturpalast
The Dresden Kulturpalast is, as the name suggests, one of the city’s cultural centres and home of the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra. The host of our festival, the Philharmonic Children’s Choir, also rehearses here twice a week – normally, of course, not during these times…
This year, we should have had experience a school concert and the final concert with the world premiere, composed especially for the festival, in this overwhelming concert hall!
In the last years of the festival’s history a new format has been added – the school concert in the Dresden Kulturpalast (KULTI, as the inhabitants of Dresden affectionately call it) is a special highlight, especially for the participating Dresden school choirs.
We would have loved to make it possible for all of them again: to stand on the big stage with the guest choirs, to experience them up closely and personal and to perform something in this fantastic concert hall.
Video Greetings from Latvia
We got video greetings from Latvia!! Koris Dzeguzites ist the girl’s choir of a secondary school from Ventspils, a city at the Latvian Baltic coast.
They present to us the girls who would have come to Dresden this weak. We really hope to meet you at one of the coming festivals! Stay healthy!
We got a video message from New Zeland, too. New Zealand Secondary Student’s Choir, it would have been a pleasure to welcome you in Dresden und to listen to your incredible voices live! Stay healthy!
During the first encounter concert in the beautiful Christuskirche in Dresden-Strehlen, three choirs would have presented themselves today with typical music of their country: the Latvian choir Koris Dzeguzites, the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir from the other side of the globe and the host, the Philharmonic Children’s Choir from Dresden.
In the past years, not only the concert audience, but also the guest choirs enthusiastically have been listening to the encounter concerts… It is not seldom that the most catchy pieces of the other choirs are tried to sing themselves after the concerts… 😉
Reception of the City of Dresden
Just as it is impossible to imagine Dresden’s extensive cultural life without our festival, it has also become a tradition that the young singers from all over the world are welcomed personally by the city’s honorary staff.
At a personal reception in the city hall the official welcome is combined with an entry in the city’s guest book.
The originally planned actors of today’s encounter concert sent us video messages, too. It’s so good yet still getting an aural impression of yours!
More musical posts can be found here: PizzicantoGeo-je Children’s ChoirTutti Choir
After an exciting (or even relaxed) family day, which the host families would have arranged individually with their host children, the second encounter concert would have taken place this evening.
The choirs Pizzicanto from Austria, Geo-je Children’s Choir from South Korea and Tutti Choir from Belarus could have shown themselves from their best side. The wonderful interior of the Christuskirche (Dresden-Strehlen) flatters the voices of the singers. At the same time, it offers a stage for the choirs in their traditional uniforms in a beautiful way.
We would have expected the crowning finale of our festival week tonight – the long-awaited world premiere of “A Good Place” by the wonderful composer Esmeralda Conde Ruiz.
The piece of music, which is dedicated to sustainability and environmental protection, would have been accompanied by a performance with the lamps of the Little Sun Foundation. We are looking forward to this musical light show – hopefully next year!Read more about the composer und her piece of music here.
Today we want to send greetings from Dresden to the world! The Dresden Philharmonic Children’s Choir and it’s conductor Gunter Berger are happy that the possibility to make new musical contacts and friends is only postponed, but not cancelled…
Again, another wonderful festival week would be almost over now … but there would still be one big highlight to come.
All of our guest choirs as well as the Dresden Philharmonic Children’s Choir, would have been able to perform a varied concert evening together in the home of the Dresdner Philharmonie, the large concert hall of the Kulturpalast Dresden. The concert is postponed to May 2nd, 2021!
With many kisses and hugs we would have wistfully said goodbye to our guests today… how good that our encounter are still to come!
Some of this year’s expected choirs will probably visit us in an upcoming festival! Maybe already in 2021?
!April 26 – May 3, 2021!
The special concerts within the festival week as well as concerts beyond the festival frame are giving the musical and friendly relations between the hosting schools and choirs and their guest choirs a forum.
For example, the school choir of the Laborschule Dresden has continued its close musical cooperation with one of the guest choirs of the festival in 2016, the Daejeon Observatory Children’s Choir from South Korea. In 2019, they performed a world premiere together with the Berlin Girls’ Choir.
