by ·Kommentare deaktiviert für Projekt DIETRICH B. 80 des Ensemble Nobiles

Zum 80. Todestag von Dietrich Bonhoeffer hat das Ensemble Nobiles das Projekt DIETRICH B. 80 ins Leben gerufen.

2025 jährt sich der Todestag Dietrich Bonhoeffers zum 80. Mal. Der lutherische Theologe wurde als einer der letzten NS-Gegner am 09. April 1945 im Konzentrationslager Flossenbürg hingerichtet.

Die Strahlkraft der Glaubensgedanken ist es, die das Ensemble Nobiles inspirierte ein Projekt von internationalem Format zur Ehrung Dietrich Bonhoeffers zu konzipieren. Für einen großen gemischten Chor und Männervokalquintett sollen sechs Komponisten aus Amerika, England, Deutschland, Australien und Neuseeland mit der Vertonung einer Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Messe beauftragt werden. 

Mit der European Voices Association e. V. konnte ein gemeinnütziger Verein als Partner gefunden werden, der das Projekt DIETRICH B. 80 unterstützt durch das Einwerben und Weiterleiten von Spendengeldern.

Der Vorstand des gemeinnützigen Vereins European Voices Association e. V. war sofort begeistert von unserem Vorhaben und hat zwischenzeitlich einen Kooperationsvertrag mit dem Ensemble Nobiles geschlossen, um bei diesem Vorhaben zur Seite stehen zu können. 

Details zum Projekt und Möglichkeiten dieses durch eine Spende zu unterstützen finden sich auf der Homepage des Ensemble Nobiles unter:

www.ensemblenobiles.de/dietrichb

by ·Kommentare deaktiviert für Winner of the European Voices Award 2023

We are proud to announce, that this years European Voices Award goes to:

ONAIR
Since 2013, the Berlin a cappella ensemble: André Bachmann, Marta Helmin, Jennifer Kothe and Patrick Oliver, present vocal perfection, artistic arrangements, as well as innovative sound design and extensive stage performance.

The ensemble will perform at the Münster Vocal Festival 2024, on Saturday, September 28th.

by ·Kommentare deaktiviert für Tobias Hug Passed Away

With great sorrow have we received the information that Tobias Hug has passed away.

Tobi has been active in the a-cappella-scene for more than 20 years.
While being active as beatboxer on stage, he also loved showing young people the beautiful use of ones own voice – for vocal songs, but also for beatboxing.
He created the worldwide largest beatbox-choir in Hong Kong (with over 7000 young people beatboxing simultaneously) and supported multiple festivals, not to mention the festival he created by himself, the Black Forest Voices Festival in Kirchzarten (Germany).

Tobi was a founding member of EVA and supported the idea of EVA where he was able to.
We lost a good friend today.
Tilo, Karin, Hanno and Thomas

by ·Kommentare deaktiviert für Acappella-online.de Now Hosted by EVA

We are very pleased to inform you that the European Voices Association (EVA) will take over the platform “acapella-online.de” on October 1st. We thank Volker Bauer – the founder and long-time operator of this site – very much for his confidence in us and assure him to give our best and to continue his work conscientiously. Volker Bauer writes the following about his decision:

Dear singers, groups, fans, enthusiasts of vocal music.

Alea iacta est – as the Latin says. The dice have been thrown, a decision has been made, one door is just beginning to close, while another, hopefully bigger one, is opening up and revealing a glimpse of the future of acappella-online.de.

As you may have read on the website and in other places during the last weeks and months, I was looking for successors – because for health reasons I could not do a project like acappella-online.de anymore, and certainly not alone. I was quite open whether this is an individual like me, who does it out of pure enthusiasm, an organisation that already deals with vocal music, or a group of people, who combine to rejuvenate acappella-online.de. There were a lot of conversations, discussions, considerations and procedural models.

Today I can announce the result of this work:

European Voices Association e. V. (EVA) takes over acappella-online.de, the platform for vocal music in German-speaking countries.

I am optimistic that the colleagues from EVA will manage to transform the website, the platform and the information into the here and now and that you, who use the website, will enjoy browsing on acappella-online.de again.

I would like to thank you all for your years of loyalty and support. You have always made sure that I have further developed, supported and expanded. Moreover, not to forget, you took care of the content. acappella-online.de is what you call “community driven” – I took care of the framework, you took care of the content. I thank you very much for that.

My thanks and fingers crossed to European Voices Association, who will now start to fulfil the expectations I and you set in them regarding the new, polished acappella-online.de.

All the best to you and lots of fun with music only made from vocal chords …

Volker
“acappellamaniac”

by ·Kommentare deaktiviert für Winner of the European Voices Award 2019

We are proud to announce, that this years European Voices Award goes to:

Vocal Line

For more than 28 years Vocal Line and director Jens Johansen have set new standards for a cappella music, winning numerous international music prizes and gaining a reputation as one of the best vocal ensembles in the world. Vocal Line has performed with superstars like Bobby McFerrin and The Rolling Stones, travelled all over the world, and they´ve recorded eight studio albums with complex yet catchy arrangements of pop and rock masterpieces.

The video of the presentation of the award can be found here:

by ·Kommentare deaktiviert für It’s in our blood: An interview with Ensemble Nobiles

When tenors Paul Heller and Christian Pohlers, baritone Felix Hübner, and basses Lukas Lomtscher and Lucas Heller started Ensemble Nobiles, they already knew they wanted to be a professional a cappella group. The singers had met in St. Thomas Boys’ Choir in Leipzig, in which they had all sung for nine years or more and had learned musicianship and how to create a blended choral sound.

At first, they tried music in a number of different styles, including vocal jazz and arrangements by the popular German group The Wise Guys. However, it quickly became clear: pop a cappella isn’t in their blood.

So what is in the group’s blood? In a word, the choral tradition of Leipzig. In the St. Thomas’ Boys’ Choir, they grew up on the music of Bach and other liturgical and German composers. Once they began to focus on their strengths, the group began to experience much more success: they have sung new commissions by contemporary composers, have won several awards, and had 97 performances in 2015.

Unlike many a cappella groups, especially pop groups, Ensemble Nobiles doesn’t re-arrange songs. The two tenors, Paul Heller and Christian Pohlers, are both composers as well as singers, and the group has performed some of their original pieces. Otherwise, they stick to classical and contemporary choral repertoire written or arranged for four or five male voices. Their current repertoire includes some Weill, some Gershwin, some Hugo Distler, and the Leipzieger Liedertafel program: an evening of music by German Romantic composers with connections of some sort to Leipzig.

They do enjoy a somewhat wider range of music, however: Christian is currently studying opera and is a fan of Puccini; Lukas L. is partial to Poulenc, and Lucas H., Paul’s twin, likes Arthur Sullivan’s “The Long Day Closes.”  

To experience the music that flows through their veins, check out http://www.ensemblenobiles.de/new-events-1/ for information on their upcoming concerts.

A previous version of this article contained some innaccuracies, for which we apologize. –Ed.

by ·Kommentare deaktiviert für Artist spotlight: Ensemble Kumo from Finland

This time we have our artist spotlight on Finnish upcoming vocal group “KUMO”, who have just released this Christmas single https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N142oxLl7KM&feature=youtu.be

Hello all!

We are a vocal group called Kumo from Finland.

Our group has five singers. Four of us study music education at the Sibelius Academy (the University of the Arts Helsinki), and our bass singer is – naturally – a doctor. 😉 Also, we have a really important sixth member in our group: our sound engineer. Whatever we do on stage, he makes it even more awesome!

Kumo was founded in the beginning of 2012. First it was just for fun, but pretty soon we realized we might really have something here and our passion for a cappella kept growing all the time. By now we are already so hooked to this stuff we simply cannot stop! Probably every a cappella singer knows how rewarding it is when even the simplest harmony rings perfectly in tune. Sound wise the key to our blend is – besides hard work of course – the fact that all of us come from various musical backgrounds. Some of us had studied mostly classical singing before this project, whereas some have a stronger background in pop/jazz vocals. Also, not all of us had sung in a choir or vocal group before we started with Kumo, which we feel also brings in new and fresh ways to look at things.

One of our passions is also to always find new and unique ways to bring our music to our listeners. Three years ago we started a concept that hasn’t been done that much yet in the world. Our “Concerts in the dark” let the listeners completely concentrate on the music. Cutting off all the visual parts of a show gives the listeners a chance to experience our voices in a deeper way. One of our singers – Kirsi – came up with the idea when she was listening to a concert and realized that when people really want to concentrate on the music they tend to lean back and close their eyes. So why not create a concert based on that idea and cut the visuals off completely! We feel that people have been really interested about this concept. It is something we want to keep working with and take the idea even further.

This past year has been groundbreaking for us also music wise. We’ve been composing and arranging a lot of our own music lately. With only a few years behind us it feels that we have finally found the sound we’ve been aiming for and really keep working hard to develop it into something recognizable, something of our own. This fall we also published our first Christmas single “Tonttu” (The Christmas Elf), our arrangement of a famous finnish Christmas song. The next step now is to make our debut album, which we are planning on recording in the summer of 2016. That is something we have really been looking forward to for a long time now!

www.lauluyhtyekumo.fi

@kumoacappella

by ·Kommentare deaktiviert für Chairman’s Post – by Florian Städtler

+++ It would mean much to me, if you shared this with your vocal music friends, colleagues and networks! +++
This is my personal opinion, coming from more than three years on the EVA board. Just wanted to make a few things clear. 

  1. I’m proud and happy to work for EVA, the European Voices Association.
  2. We’ve been around since 2012 and as a matter of fact the kick-off euphoria has been replaced by reality, i.e. work, more work, slow progress, setbacks, difficulties, detours and tedious admin work.
  3. Nevertheless, we have *started* and although we haven’t completely changed the vocal music world (yet), we have learned and achieved many things that will hopefully make us better community organizers.
  4. One word to all the cherrypickers, cheap talkers and skeptics who like to ask questions like „What’s in it for me?“ „What is the actual pay-off?“ „What’s the return of investment on my membership fee?“ and „What are these guys actually doing?“: Have a look at the www.europeanvoices.org, google for LEOsings (the 2-year EU project we participated in and paid for 22 workshop trips of our members to places like Barcelona, Aalborg, Tours, Freiburg and Copenhagen) or – much better – get in touch and ask what YOU can do for the community. Not vice versa. 
  5. This association is still in the „seed phase“, i.e. the community ( 🙂 you) that longs for accessible information, better vocal music education and a more advanced way of networking, cannot expect quick returns. Becoming a member now and for the foreseeable future is a commitment to the good cause: To improve the framework of working, rehearsing, performing and simply enjoying vocal music.
  6. If we want this idea to grow, we have to grow in numbers. What me most urgently need are people who help to create relevant content: We would love to have EVA social media managers, co-bloggers, researchers and yes, the occasional admin hand. #joinEVAnow does not only mean to become a paying member of the Association. We need you to grow as a team of volunteers, who are always short on time.

Thank you for spreading the news, Karin Mueller, Volker Bauer, Peter Martin Jacob, Indra Tedjasukmana and Tilo Beckmann are looking forward to your comments, your recommendations and your input. And for more international, female, young, innovative, creative members for the EVA core team.

Here’s to a great community, to our vision, but also the long and winding road of discussing, planning, learning and implementing.

FSt
Florian

P.S. One thing you could do right now – it won’t take you more than 10 minutes: Go to the EVA website and add your favorite vocal music festival to the European Vocal Music Map. It will only grow if you participate!

by ·Kommentare deaktiviert für BALK TOPfestival 2013 – report

Vocal spectacle: 90 choirs in one day at 10 competitions
[report by Ruut te Velthuis and Annemarie Homan] 

Rotterdam (NL). After a full year of planning, auditions, and organization, the biennial BALK TOPfestival took place on November 9 2013 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. More than 80 Dutch and 2 Belgian choirs, varying from huge pop choirs to vocal groups of only three singers, competed in 10 competitions in 4 categories. It was a day filled with harmonies and songs and almost too much to take in.

Since the of creation BALK (Dutch association for light music choirs), its focus has been on education and meeting and we still put most of our energy in setting up and contributing to courses (from singers to conductors) and the organization of festivals. BALK mostly has a supporting role in the regional festivals, but once every two years we set up our own, national choir festival/competition.

In 2007 we decided to bring two separate festivals that already existed, Hotzone (for pop choirs) and Focus (for vocal groups), together into one large national choir festival, featuring only light music.

Our goal in doing this was to reinforce the feeling of belonging to the BALK family, enable cross-pollination between pop choirs and vocal groups and to inspire each other even more. And above all that, there was a very practical reason: by enlarging our focus we could tap into more financial resources, bring new impulses to the festival and create a better image.

Overall it can be said that the competitive element is stronger in light vocal music than it is in the world of classical music. The same applies to the groups themselves, striving to be unique, to stand out from the rest in arrangements/songs as well as in presentation. This makes for a great diversity in choirs and vocal groups and makes each one of them interesting to see and hear.

The BALK TOPfestival is biennial, which means that the one in 2013 was the fourth time the festival was organized in this format since the start in 2007. So, what was/is the big success of the BALK TOPfestival 2013? First of all, it was the scale of the event. It brought together an amazing array of groups under one roof. This meant that there was at least something for everyone to enjoy. Second of all, people were being inspired by what they heard and saw in the various competitions. And third of all, there were many youth choirs that participated. Two of the youth groups were chosen to perform on the stage of the 2,200 seat main concert hall at the end of the day, and they just blew the crowd away! (watch the video! http://youtu.be/wk7aclsr6zw)

Finally a huge “thank you” should go out to all the participants, for bringing their enthusiasm and creating a wonderful atmosphere. Every choir needs a critical eye every now and then and also needs something to work toward, to have peak moments. Working toward this common goal can really strengthen the bonds within a group.

Amateur choirs and vocal groups are an important part of the Dutch or any other society. To sing together enhances the feeling of interconnection and brotherhood. BALK brings  these groups together at regional and national festivals, enabling them to learn from each other, to meet and to greet and to bring (light) choir music to the next level.

BALK is already planning the next TOPfestival, which will probably take place in November 2015.

Video with highlights of the festival: http://youtu.be/Gwj_-WYNx5Y

Youth groups performing Cup Song: http://youtu.be/nvMTPfMx8OQ

www.balknet.nl

www.facebook.com/balklichtvocaal

www.twitter.com/balkvocaal