The Sing For Your Life! Choir is a non-auditioned community choir based in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The choir sings predominantly Gospel, African and World music – all in three and four part a cappella. The group started in 2005 with about a dozen singers – these days it’s considerably bigger, with more than 120 singers performing in a concert to celebrate the choir’s 10th birthday in late 2015. Other performance highlights over the years have included the annual Festival of Voices in Tasmania, numerous community events and fundraisers, 100-voice a cappella ‘flash-mobs’, and Carols by Candlelight events.
Approximately 70 Sing For Your Life! Choir members travelled to perform in Cork, accompanied by the choir’s Musical Director Jane Christie-Johnston.
Founded in 1996, Chœur et Mouvement (France) is a children’s choir comprising thirty young singers between the ages of 7 and 18. Directed by choirmaster Brigitte Chambard and accompanied on piano by Bertrand Ravalard, the choir’s repertoire includes traditional, variety and memory songs. In 2015 Chœur et Mouvement produced a CD, Nous Chanterons Pour Vous, a tribute to the children deported from the Drancy internment camp in Paris to death camps during World War II, and this year they will participate in a documentary about songs in the concentration camps. Since 2009 the choir has performed internationally in cities including London, Prague, Quebec, Rome, and on the island of Corsica.
Founded in 1979 by Lucy Lin (current Musical Director) and Ling Tang, Tung-Hsin Choral Society (USA) was the first full-fledged Chinese-American chorus in metropolitan Washington D.C.. The group was formed with a purpose of promoting interest in choral music and providing the community with opportunities to appreciate Chinese music heritage. Over 36 years, Tung-Hsin Choral Society has performed at such venues as the Kennedy Center, the National Theater, the Museum of American History and the Lincoln Center. The choir’s well-rounded repertoire ranges from the composers of the 16th century to the contemporaries, from Western music to Chinese, including sacred songs, art songs, choral songs from opera, theme songs from films, the Broadway musical hits, popular and folk songs. Outside of Washington, D.C., the group has performed in Boston, Ottawa, New York, Seattle and Los Angeles as well as in Taiwan, Quemoy and Hong Kong.
The deineMaids (Germany) are a group of twenty spirited female singers from Cologne whose stage performances include choreography and movement and incorporate a variety of musical styles. The ensemble was formed in 2003 by a small group of men and women, all of whom were parents of pre-school children. Over the years as the fathers became fewer and fewer and more women joined, it has evolved into an all-female choir. Led by jazz singer and vocal coach Julia Zipprick, deineMaids received an award at the Sing and Swing Festival in Northrhine-Westphalia in 2013 and performed with Cork’s own Cantabile Vocal Ensemble as part of the Cologne/Cork twinning project in Cologne in 2015.
The CasaSawt Choir (Morocco) brings together amateur singers of different ages, backgrounds and experience in choral singing to interpret the richness of Moroccan music, Arabic music and world music. The choir’s mission is to promote choral music amongst the youth of Morocco. Established in 2007 under the name “Choeur des Jeunes de Casablanca”, the group is composed of choristers from differing backgrounds who are united by their love of choral singing. Conductor Adnane Matrone is a contemporary artist driven by his passion for music and his desire to follow the constant evolution of the musical world. His creativity and knowledge of world music feed the eastern music communicated through the Casasawt Choir with a polyphonic touch.