Website and videos offer front-row seat at June’s International Choral Festival

Last June renowned choirs from four continents convened on the Yale campus for five days of singing, learning, and celebrating the joy of choral performance. For those who missed all or parts of the International Choral Festival or want to revisit it, there is a newly launched website featuring information on each of the five participating choral groups and recorded highlights of their performances.

Part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, the event was organized by Yale Glee Club director Jeffrey Douma and held June 19–23. It featured concerts by the Central Conservatory of Music Chorus, Beijing; Cambridge University Consort of Voices, United Kingdom; Manado State University Choir, Indonesia; and the Imilonji Kantu Choral Society, South Africa, as well as daily master classes with the choirs’ directors.

Integrated into the choral festival was a two-day symposium titled “Choirs Transforming Our World,” which showcased innovative choral programs that empower performers and audiences alike through song. Among those were the Joyful Noise choir for singers with developmental disabilities and the Threshold Choir, which performs in prisons, hospitals, and hospices. Bookending the festival were concerts by Yale and New Haven ensembles: The recently inaugurated Yale Choral Artists sang on the first day of the event, and the festival concluded with a gala concert featuring the Yale Alumni Chorus and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.

The video below aims to capture the spirit of choral singing as demonstrated at the festival.