In 2023, with the return to normalization of social life, domestic choral activities, which have been pressed the "pause button" by the epidemic, will usher in a full restart, opening a new stage of orderly return and rational development.
Reboot and renew.
After the Spring Festival in 2023, choirs across the country have resumed rehearsals one after another, and various choral institutions and organizations have gradually resumed their activities. After the recovery preparations in the first half of the year and the "warm-up" of choir meetings and small choral activities in various places, the choral activities in 2023 will usher in a peak in the summer of July and August, and various large-scale choral activities will be held one after another, dizzying, and the popularity will even continue to the end of the year.
The 9th China Children's Choir Festival was held in Chengjiang City, Yunnan Province from July 18th to 21st. During the 6 days, 8 groups of children's choir team competitions, 4 special meetings of specially invited outstanding demonstration teams, and 8 expert workshops were held.
The 2023 August Choral Festival of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, held from August 4 to 20, with the theme of "Harmony and Harmony", invited more than 10 choirs from different nationalities and regions to present 13 wonderful choral meetings for the audience in the capital, and launched online live broadcasts of many ** sessions, spreading the sound of "harmony" to the whole country and even overseas.
On November 29, the "10th Beijing Choral Festival and the 7th Haidian 10,000-person Choir Season", which opened in August 2023 and lasted for nearly 4 months, ended in the ** Hall of Zhongshan Park in Beijing. This veteran choral event, which has a wide range of participation among Beijing choral enthusiasts, has ushered in 98 choirs in Beijing after the epidemic, with more than 6,000 direct participants and more than 100,000 online choirs.
As the first national choral base and choral network training base of the China Choral Association, Zhongshan City will continue to cooperate with the China Choral Association in 2023 to hold the 2023 China City Choir Show of "Striving for a New Journey and Singing a New Era". The 4th "Poly Summer" Shanghai International Children's Choir Festival and the 6th Zijin Choir Festival have also been rejuvenated in the restart.
In addition to the restart of brand activities that were popular in the past, a number of new choral festivals and choral activities have also sprung up in 2023, bringing a new atmosphere to the domestic choral industry. From July 12th to 16th, the Pengcheng Cup China (Shenzhen) Children's Choir Festival was held in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, with 58 participating choirs and 46 performance choirs from all over the country participating. The festival held a number of high-level meetings, choir evaluations, conducting training camps, work creation seminars, lectures by famous troupes and other activities, and released 23 new choral works composed by 14 composers commissioned or specially commissioned.
The first China Choral Conference and the 2023 National Youth Choir Exhibition will be held in Beijing from July 17th to July 21st. From September 25th to September 27th, the first "China Hengdian Chorus Carnival" was held in the New Yuanming Palace of Hengdian Film and Television City. Nearly 30 choirs from all over the country gathered to compete and decided 21 gold awards and 13 silver awards in this year's choral carnival. During the event, the "110th Anniversary Development Forum of Chinese Choral Singing" was also held. In addition, emerging choral festivals such as the first China Baotou Yellow River Choral Festival, the 2023 First Yangtze River Choral Conference (Yichang, China), and the first Chengdu Choral Festival have also kicked off in various places.
In 2023, when choral activities return to normal, the popularity of choral activities will not only return to the pre-epidemic level, but also a considerable number of new activities and emerging choral organizations will appear. In addition to the first meeting and performance, the major choral activities have set up rich activities in the form of conductor training, team rehearsal guidance, master classes, workshops, etc., and the single performance mode has quietly changed. Compared with the pre-pandemic period, there is a trend towards regionalization of the choir teams participating in the event. At the same time, due to the impact of the epidemic for three years, the vast majority of domestic choral teams have experienced the recovery and run-in of voice and rehearsal modes in this year, and have made certain adjustments in timbre, performance methods, selection of works, and selection of activities.
Return to the international stage.
From July 3 to 13, the 12th World Choir Games 2023 was held in Gangneung, South Korea, with 324 choirs from 46 countries and regions participating, and 30 choirs from China (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). During the competition, the 2023 World Choral Council General Assembly was held at Gangneung City Hall in South Korea on July 8, where more than 100 representatives from 96 countries and regions discussed and exchanged views on the future development of international choral culture. Representatives of the World Choral Council shared their current experiences and challenges in choral and educational in their respective countries, reflecting on and discussing the impact of the pandemic on local choirs and the resilience and adaptability of choirs around the world in response to the pandemic.
The choir of the Hong Kong Diocesan Boys' School sings at the 12th World Choir Games 2023 Photo by Li Qixuan.
On July 23rd, the 60th Ségizi International Choir Competition, a world-renowned choral competition, ended in Gorizia, Italy.
As most domestic teams are still in the recovery and adaptation period, the number of teams that choose to participate in foreign choral activities in 2023 is far from returning to the pre-epidemic level, and it still needs the blessing of time, patience and the right time.
The new and old groups have walked out of the road of characteristics.
In the three years of the epidemic, the survival and development of choirs across the country have been greatly tested. Despite this, some established choirs have taken advantage of this time to accumulate strength, while some emerging choirs have bucked the trend and carved out their own unique paths.
On May 21, the 20th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Tiankong Choir of Central China Normal University was held in Wuhan Qintai Hall. As a high-level college choir in China, Tiankong's 20 years have also been the 20 years of great development of Chinese choral art and the gradual transformation of Chinese college choral art from choral activities to choral art. On August 21, the Beijing Philharmonic Choir, founded by conductor and educator Yang Hongnian, celebrated its 40th anniversary. In the 40 years since its establishment, the choir has been adhering to the purpose of love and dedication, and has planted the seeds of dreams in the field of youth education.
In August, the 2023** season tour of Shenzhen Futian Xinghui Choir was launched in Shenzhen, Beijing, Harbin, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Founded in 2017, the Xinghui Choir is a high-quality choir mainly composed of young people, and it is also the first choir to hold tours in many well-known halls in China since the founding of Shenzhen for more than 40 years.
On the evening of November 11th, the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Chengdu Children's Choir was staged in the Chengdu Symphony Orchestra's Hall "Golden Conch", which was the first appearance of the Chengdu Children's Choir in this newly built hall. Chengdu Children's Choir was initiated and established by the Chengdu Municipal People's ** initiative and the Chengdu Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism, and is affiliated to the Chengdu Symphony Orchestra. Since its establishment in November 2018, the choir has embarked on a path of growth with its own characteristics in five years, which has played a great role in promoting the development of children's choir in Chengdu and the western region.
On the afternoon of December 10th, the "Innocent Years" Chinese Chorus Outstanding New Works Special Session and the Third Anniversary of the Establishment of Deep Space Chorus were held in Beijing Jinfan Hall. Founded by conductor Meng Dapeng in September 2020, the "Deep Space Choir" brand currently has three groups: the Deep Space Youth Choir, the Deep Space Chamber Choir, and the Deep Space Mixed Choir. 2023 is also Meng Dapeng's 40th year of conducting work, and in recent years, he has devoted himself to the cultivation of SAB singing, as well as the commission creation and accumulation of related choral works, and has carried out good practice on the platform of "Deep Space Chorus".
Pay attention to talent training.
In recent years, the cultivation of choral conducting talents has gradually attracted attention in the domestic choral circles. Especially after the epidemic, the explosion of choral events has increased the demand for choral conductorsCompared with the pre-epidemic period, the number of command training courses has increased a lot, the training content has also been correspondingly in-depth, and the training objects have become more segmented.
Most of the command training courses are short-term, regional, and targeted. For example, on May 24, the Chengdu National Choral and Choral Conductor Workshop opened at the Chengdu High-tech Chinese Performance Grand Theater. From June 9th to 11th, 350 choral conductors from 30 provinces, cities and regions across the country participated in the three-day training and discussion of the "2023 Choral Aesthetic Education Forum and Young Conductor Training Camp" in Hangzhou. The Forum on Choral Education and Revitalization for Rural Teachers in Primary and Secondary Schools, which provides learning opportunities for rural teachers in choral conducting, was held in Shanghai from 22 to 24 June to promote the popularization and development of rural primary and secondary school education through choral singing. From July 28th to August 8th, the first national closed training for choral conductors and the training camp for the training model of national celebration choral conductors was held in Changsha, Hunan, and more than 150 students from 28 counties and cities in 13 provinces across the country received a 12-day training. From August 27th to 29th, the 10th Beijing Choral Festival Conductor Training Course was held in Beijing.
Initiated by Li Gang, a professor at the ** College of Capital Normal University, and served as the artistic director and conductor, the "National Ceremony and Songs of the Prosperous Age" Celebration Chorus and Sub-conductor Training Documentary ** Ideological and Political Course will be held in many universities, communities, party and government agencies and education system teacher training across the country in 2023. The ideological and political course uses the distinctive choral form of celebration chorus to cultivate the professional skills of choral conducting, and also opens up a new direction for the ideological and political course.
The organizational structure was further optimized.
Before the epidemic, while the domestic choral industry was developing rapidly, it also produced some impetuous chaos. The three years of the epidemic have put the brakes on the rapid development of Chinese choral singing, but it has also provided time for the choral community to face up to problems. After the resumption of domestic choral singing in 2023, many choral organizations and institutions have carried out general elections and organizational adjustments as scheduled.
On February 6, the fourth general meeting of the Beijing Choral Association was held. The meeting reviewed and summarized the work of the Beijing Choral Association in the past six years, deliberated and approved the work report of the Council, the financial report, the work report of the Board of Supervisors and the revised Articles of Association of the Beijing Choral Association, elected the new Board of Directors, the Board of Supervisors and related institutions of the Beijing Choral Association, and studied and deployed the main tasks for the next four years.
From September 20th to 21st, the 2023 China ** Family Association Choral Alliance Work Conference was held in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. At the meeting, arrangements were made for the development of the Alliance's membership, choral activities and the Little Admiralty Choir Competition, and other matters of the Alliance were discussed.
On October 31, the 9th Member Congress and General Election Conference of China Choral Association was held in Taiyuan, Shanxi. The conference elected the directors, executive directors, secretary-general and above, and elected Ma Junying as the chairman of the 9th China Choral Association. Provincial and municipal choral associations, choral alliances and other organizations have also completed or promoted the general election or organizational structure adjustment in 2023.
This year, the choral organization structure at all levels and localities across the country has been adjusted and improved, scientific training, choral management, choral professional skills, and the combination of choral singing and new technologies have been paid more attention, the work functions of choral workers have been clearer, the planning and holding of choral activities have been more standardized and scientifically guided, the choral chaos and impetuous wind have been improved to a certain extent, and the overall development of choral has been more rational. It is believed that in 2024, Chinese choral singing will not only return to the peak of development before the epidemic, but also usher in a new stage of development that is more in line with the law of choral development and pursues higher choral art.
Chen Wei Wei Wen.