Experimental choir project: Wolfratshausen, Egyptians and Lithuanians sing together

Created: 06/02/2022, 06:00

By: Andrea Weber

Looking forward to June 10th: Choir director Yoshihisa Matthias Kinoshita (left) and head of the music school Manfred Heller.

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Three choirs, three nations: Wolfratshausen, Egyptians and Lithuanians sing together in an experimental project.

A message for peace and understanding.

Wolfratshausen – Just imagine: three choirs from three different cultures with different mother tongues meet and understand each other through the music.

In short, that is what the Wolfratshausen music school director Manfred Heller and choir director Yoshihisa Matthias Kinoshita announced in a press conference on Monday.

An experimental choir project, funded by the EU funding line Erasmus+, which is now running for two years.

It is also a message for peace and understanding.

On Friday, June 10th, from 6 p.m., the Wolfratshausen Children's and Youth Choir, the PASCH Choir from Cairo, Egypt and the “Hgz Sound” Choir from Klaipeda in Lithuania will present a special concert experience entitled “You(th) Can Sing" in the Loisachhalle in Wolfratshausen.

Wolfratshausen: Choirs present the project at the concert "You (th) Can Sing".

But first, 48 young people from these three choirs, aged between 12 and 17, will learn in a workshop from June 6th to 9th in the youth hostel in Kreuth am Tegernsee how to use mindfulness, perception and the sound of your own voice to create a common voice can find musical language.

This idea came about five years ago when choirmaster Kinoshita visited the choir in Cairo.

The Lithuanian choir of the Hermann-Sudermann-Gymnasium in Klaipeda was invited via the Goethe-Institut.

It is a region that is German-speaking.

Now, in order to understand what will happen, Kinoshita urged those present on Monday: "Please pay attention to how you react when I say a sentence to you in Japanese." It was the tonality and volume of his voice and facial expressions that that transported an emotion and made a statement.

In a similar way, the international young people in the workshop should communicate spontaneously and playfully and interact with tones and sounds, explains the choir director.

"We don't know what happens as a result."

Concert is almost unfinished, but "exciting for everyone"

The Munich composer Helga Pogatschar will develop choral arrangements from the still virtually unpolished vocal material.

This hitherto unique international choir project will run until 2023. "This year is the first step," says Heller.

The choirs get to know each other, should develop creative ideas and learn cognitive skills, that is, listening, looking, reacting, interacting.

At the choir concert evening on June 10, the audience will first hear the respective choirs' own repertoires with traditional musical influences from their homeland, then a part sung together and the experimental part that has been worked out.

It is still an "unfinished concert", says Heller, but "it will be exciting for everyone".

The sequel is expected to follow at Pentecost 2023.

In the meantime, the choirs want to keep in touch online and continue to work on the composition together with Helga Pogatschar.

It is a search for the musical identity of one's own language and whether there are similarities with other languages, so Kinoshita hopes.

"Maybe we'll start listening to each other more with the musical ear."  

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