The Real Group is a Swedish vocal group with five dedicated singers and musicians. The group has been touring for more than 30 years and continues to excite a broad audience all over the world. With a unique musical expression in a field between jazz, pop and Northern European choral music, The Real Group is considered one of the leading forces in the world of vocal music.
The Real Group was formed in 1984 by five students at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. The original members were eager to explore the artistic world of vocal music with an emphasis on jazz, pop and folk music. The group quickly gained an international audience and has grown to become one of the cornerstones of modern a cappella. Today the legacy of The Real Group is maintained and further developed by worldwide concert tours, recordings, educational mentoring and published scores. The mentorship has evolved over the years and continuously seeks to integrate artistic aspirations with human rights, ecological awareness, global concern and a feministic mindset.
The Real Group is: Emma Nilsdotter, Lisa Östergren, Anders Edenroth, Morten Vinther, Jānis Strazdiņš.
S:t Jacobs Vokalensemble (former S:t Jacobs Ungdomskör) is a mixed choir consisting of ca 40 members. Founded in the autumn of 2007 as a youth choir, the choir was part of a project within the City of Stockholm called “Storstadsprojektet” (eg. “The Cosmopol Project”), organized by the parish of the cathedral of Stockholm. The aim of the project was to spread choral singing among youth singers; and the choir made its debut concert on November 17th that same year. Since then, and still today, the choir is conducted by Mikael Wedar.
The majority of concerts and activities of SJVE are held in S:t Jacobs kyrka and in Storkyrkan. We rehearse on Mondays, participate in church services several times a year, hold concerts in our own right and together with other musicians. We aim to give our audience special and diverse performances that stretches beyond the immediate impression, but resonates long after the doors close behind you.
S:t Jacobs Vokalensemble are blessed with several international successes – the Slovakia Cantat held in Bratislava, Slovakia (2010) were we recieved the Grand Prix of the festival, among other recognitions. In the autumns of 2012 and 2016, we competed in the very honourable International Harald Andersén Chamber Choir Competition, which is held every three years in Helsinki, Finland. We managed to attain the Third price on both occasions! In November of 2013 we took part in Concurso Coral de Tolosa in Basque Country, Spain. Out of five possible awards, we AMAZINGLY won all of them and thus qualified for the European Grand Prix in Debrecen, Hungary 2014. That spring in Hungary: we took the gold.
When we’re not in competition, we aim to participate around the globe in different singing contexts, such as festivals, tours and educational programs. These arrangements has thus far taken us to places like Hongkong, France and Russia.
The Jugendkonzertchor, comprised of 70 talented, young men and women between the ages 13 and 19, is the top youth ensemble within the Chorakademie-Dortmund, Europe’s largest singing school. Passionate singing paired with great attention to detail, youthful spirit combined with a drive for excellence. Young singers with a great enthusiasm and energy for classical music joined with the highest level of choral craftsmanship and artistry. These young singers have grown up musically in the Chorakademie, studying singing since the age of 6 in either the boys‘, girls‘ or children’s choirs. As German ambassadors for classical music, presenting roughly 50 concerts throughout Germany each year, these kids represent the highest standard in youth choral artistry with their extraordinary and homogenous sound.
The young singers of the Jugendkonzertchor rehearse several times a week, including private voice lessons, developing not only as ensemble singers but also as soloists. Since its founding in 2012, the Jugendkonzertchor has enjoyed rapid growth and development, becoming a permanent institution in the Ruhr area of Germany. In addition to regular appearances at international choral festivals such as chor.com, the Ruhrfestspiele, the Kultursommer Rheinland-Pfalz or the Festival Klangvokal, the ensemble has also performed with orchestras such as the Dortmund Philharmonic, the Bielefeld Philharmonic, the Academy for Early Music in Berlin, as well as worked with renowned conductors such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Iván Fischer. In May 2016, ten singers from the Jugendkonzertchor competed in the national music competition Jugend musiziert, where all were honored with a first prize and several special prizes in the categories ‚Vocal Ensemble‘ and ‚Old Music.‘ Within the scope of the Deutschen Chorfest 2016 in Stuttgart, Germany, the ensemble received a first prize in the category ‚Youth Choirs‘ and was awarded a second prize in the category ‚German Romantic Music.‘
The Euga Male Voice Choir was founded in July 2011 by a group of young and enthusiastic musicians. The choir consists of 25 experienced choral singers, many of whom also study music. Most of the singers live in Helsinki, Turku and Tampere, hence the choir works in three cities, giving concerts several times a year. Euga performs a wide range of music, both maintaining old traditions and creating a new culture of male voice singing: the group’s repertoire includes pieces from Gregorian chants and Romantic male choir classics to commissions of contemporary music, and also pieces combining classical male choir sound with electronic music. As a young male choir, Euga is a rare instrument and aims to exploit its uniqueness by fostering a bright and well-balanced sound.
In May 2013, the Euga Male Voice Choir attended the Sixth Cornwall International Male Voice Choral Festival and was awarded first prize in the 40 Voices and Under category in the international singing competition. A year later, Euga was honored to represent Finland in Vienna by performing in the ‘Europe Sings!’ concert organized by the European Broadcasting Union and the Austrian National Broadcasting Company. In April 2015, Euga won the VI International Leevi Madetoja Male Choir Competition in Tampere, Finland, and in January 2016, Euga gave a concert with the German-Nordic Youth Philharmonic at the Berliner Philharmonie. In the summer of 2018 Euga won the Grand Prix award in the international Bratislava Choir Festival where Euga competed in two categories (sacral music and male voice music). Euga’s first CD, Ex Hibernis, contains Christmas music and was released in the year 2015.
The name Festino means „Little holiday“. It is the first word of the Italian madrigal comedy by A.Banchieri that was the first piece that Festino performed. Festino was founded in 2008 in Saint-Petersburg, Russia by the young choral conductor Alexandra Makarova. The choir unites 19 young choral conductors from Saint-Petersburg, graduated or present students of Saint-Petersburg musical College named under N.A.Rimsky-Korsakov and Saint-Petersburg State Conservatory, choral conducting faculty. Our mission is to make choral music popular among younger people and to present areas of choral music that are still not popular in Russia: Renaissance and Baroque music and modern music of twentieth and twenty first century. Festino chamber choir works with baroque music ensembles in Saint-Petersburg and Moscow, such as “Barocco concertato”, “One orchestra”, „Prattica Terza“ and „New Holland“. In cooperation with 8 composers, Festino presented two programs: „The History of madrigal“ (2014), that consists of 8 madrigals written from 15 till 20-th century and 8 modern works written specifically for the choir. A new program from 2016, “Spiritual bonds” addresses the «Russian spiritual code” of the new generation (30 and under).
Since 2015 with the music of St-Petersburg modern composer Nastasya Chruscheva female part of the choir is working in Bolshoj Tovstonogov Drama Theatre in performance “Chto delat? “ Directed by A.Moguchij. And in 2016 Festino took part in a program titled, ”400 years without Shakespeare” at the Mariinsky Theatre.
In 2014Festino won at the International chamber choir competition Miltenberg, Germany, the 1st Prize. In 2015 at the International chamber choir competition Marktoberdorf also the best young conductor`s prize for Alexandra Makarova, following with the International contest of Flanders-Maasmechelen (2017) with First Prize and Special Prize and the International Competition Florilege Vocal de Tours (Tours,France 2018).
Every year choir takes part in several festivals in St-Petersburg and Russia, such as Molot- festival,St-Petersburg Musical Autumn, From Avant-garde till Nowadays, Theatre festival Baltijsky Dom, festival 16/21, Сhristmas festival in Petrozavodsk Philarmonics. Festino performs in such concert halls as St.-Petersburg State Philharmonics, Mariinsky Theatre, State Academic Capella of St. Petersburg, Suvorov State museum and others.
The choir was founded in 1990 by conductor Māris Sirmais, and was led by Jānis Liepiņš from 2012 to 2018. The principal conductor and artistic director of the Youth Choir Kamēr… is Aivis Greters, and its vocal coaches are Jolanta Strikaite-Lapiņa, Edgars Skarbulis and Ansis Sauka.
Over the last twenty-five years, Kamēr… has achieved its special sound by cultivating its own signature performance style. Both full emotional surrender, a characteristic of amateur singers, as well as the strictest criteria for vocal quality, are of equal importance for the choir. This is expressed in the ellipsis encoded in the choir’s name, Kamēr…, which means „while“ in English. While we are still young, anything is possible…
Since its foundation, the choir has won dozens of diplomas, awards, and trophies at a variety of choral competitions. These include a prize at the Marktoberdorf Chamber Choir Competition in Germany in 1999, two European Grands Prix for Choral Singing in Gorizia (2004) and Arezzo, Italy (2013), as well as three championship prizes and gold medals at the World Choir Olympics in Xiamen, China, in 2006. Kamēr… has twice received the Latvian Great Music Award and has won the national choir competition a total of six times.
In recent years, Kamēr… has developed programs specially commissioned for the choir. Its biggest project to date is World Sun Songs (2008), which featured 17 new choral works inspired by the sun; the project included such world-renowned composers as Sir John Tavener, Giya Kancheli, Sven-David Sandström, Leonid Desyatnikov, John Luther Adams, Stephen Leek, Dobrinka Tabakova, Ko Matsushita, and others. Other examples of this concept have included the cycles Madrigals of Love (2010), Moon Songs (2012), and Amber Songs (2014), in which several celebrated composers wrote choral miniatures on love, the moon, or arrangements of Latvian folk songs, respectively.
The choir has also actively worked toward the goal of synthesizing genres and means of expression. Examples of this effort have included scenic and choreographed performances of Jersikas derība (an oratorio by Līga Celma), The Christmas Legend (a musical tale by Ēriks Ešenvalds), and The Canticles of the Holy Wind (a large-scale scenic meditation by John Luther Adams). The choir’s diversity was on full display in its 25-year anniversary concert in May 2015 at the Latvian National Opera. In three commissioned song cycles, the choir showed its skill as a nuanced a cappella ensemble (Ešenvalds’ In Bird’s Sleep), as a powerful stage group (Raimonds Tiguls’ Legend About Us), and as a splendid collaborator with a professional orchestra (Gabriel Jackson’s Spring Rounds).
Other stage partners of Kamēr… have included Gidon Kremer, Marta Sudraba, the orchestra Kremerata Baltica, Nicolas Altstaedt, Peter Schreier, Yuri Bashmet, Julius Berger, Maxim Rysanov, and many more.
Almost all of the choir’s original music as well as various choral classics in the choir’s repertoire have been recorded in a series of highly praised CDs. The latest of these are O Salutaris, a collection of choral music by Ēriks Ešenvalds, Moon Songs, a cycle of new works by Latvian composers, and Amber Songs, 17 arrangements of Latvian folk songs by international composers. The latter collection have been published in a sheet music book by Musica Baltica.
The Girls’ Choir of Aachen Cathedral was founded in 2011 with an impressive church service. The girls’ choirs of the cathedrals of Paderborn, Münster, Mainz and Cologned joined this event as visitors, and have since continued to support Aachen Chathedral’s Girls’ Choir.
In the short period of its existence the choir has already built quite a reputation and it closely cooperates with the Domsingschule of Aachen, a private catholic primary school affiliated with Aachen Cathedral. Some sixty girls, aged ten or older, are part of the Girls’ Choir, which regularly contributes to services and other events in Aachen Cathedral. The Choir is an independent ensemble of Aachen Cathedral. Its stylistic repertoire is very diverse and grows continuously. Marco Fühner has become its choirmaster in June 2013.