Join us and VOTE for the BEST VIDEO! May 25.-31, 2021
Dear choral lovers, conductors, singers!
By clicking on LINK TO VIDEO by each choir, you can watch individual videos.
From May 25 to 31, 2021 you can VOTE on YOUTUBE for those videos which impressed you the most with LIKE
After the voting, we will announce the winner and recipient of the AUDIENCE AWARD for the international choral competition Aegis carminis 2021.
KATEGORY A1
ACADEMIC CHOIR OF THE SIBERIAN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY (Russia)
Conductor: Dmitry Zadnepryanov
David Pechnikov (1967*)
O, GLADSOME LIGHT (Sacred text) - 1991
Trinity Church in Khoknly
Video concept: Dmitry Zadnepryanov
Video editing by: Andrey Lisyutkin
''We perform religious songs in the classroom, thereby showing the value of spiritual development in teaching students.''
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY SINGERS (USA)
Conductor: Andrew Crane
Jake Runestad (1986*)
LET MY LOVE BE HEARD (Alfred Noyes) - 2014
Jake Runestad
Video concept: Eldon Griffin
Video editing by: Philip Klocke
''I created this video using archived livestream footage from a concert that BYU Singers performed in the de Jong Concert Hall (Provo, UT, USA) on November 19, 2020. There was no audience in the hall at the time due to COVID regulations, and the students wore masks and stood six feet apart.
For the purposes of the AEGIS CARMINIS 2021 competition, I thought it would be nice to add some visual effects to the video. I consulted with Mr. Eldon Griffin, who creates music videos for the famed Tabernacle Choir on Temple Square (Salt Lake City, UT, USA). He gave me the ideas for the specific visual images that you see in the video. These images correlate directly to the text of the song. I then worked with BYU Singers video editor Philip Klocke to incorporate these images into our livestream footage. I believe the addition of these images enhances the text and produces an artistic effect.''
CHORUS „DIVIN” CITY SAMARA (Russia)
Conductor: Grinina Natalya Alexandrovna
Anastasia Benderskaya
THE CALL OF SPRING - 2015
Manuscript
Video concept: Andrey Patrushev
Video editing by: Andrey Patrushev
"Gukanne viasny"
This Slavic custom is one of the most cheerful and optimistic. The long winter ends, and it is replaced by a beautiful spring. In order to speed up its arrival, a national holiday is organized, which is called "Gukanne viasny". This tradition has deep roots: the name of spring began in ancient times, when our ancestors were pagans. Spring is usually called in late March or early April. Most often, the national holiday coincides with the church holiday-the Annunciation. The place where the "gukanne" takes place is always visible from afar. Everything around (trees, stones, etc.) is decorated with colorful ribbons, bright birds, cut out of cardboard, made of colored threads, fabrics and any other improvised material. Special attention is paid to the birds baked from the dough. Birds made of bread are laid out in the surrounding area to attract birds that carry spring on their wings.
Our ancestors always hung colorful homemade birds as high as possible, it was believed that so the birds that flew to the south would notice them more quickly. In this way, trees in the garden, houses, and outbuildings were decorated. It was believed that if the birds chose someone's home, there would be happiness and prosperity. In addition, bright ribbons on the trees indicated flowering. Our ancestors thought that trees would catch the fun and brightness of the ribbon and open their buds more quickly. "Gukanne viasny" is a holiday not only bright, but also very musical. Girls start to click on spring, they sing songs-vesnyanki. The peculiarity of such songs is that each verse ends with a loud cry of " Goo-oo-oo!". Hence the name - "gukanne". The whole village usually participated in the ceremony: they danced, played and laughed to show how good spring would be here.
The peculiarity of this bright national holiday has always been and remains to this day an extraordinary naturalness and liveliness. This rite does not have a clear plan of action, the main thing is to have fun, sing and enjoy life.
ROGANOVA YOUTH CAPELLA “HARMONY” (Russia)
Conductor: Eugene Ivanov
Eugene Ivanov (1996*)
BEYOND - 2021 (New work)
Manuscript
Video concept: Eugene Ivanov
Video editing by: Pavel Ivanov
"Beyond" is an audiovisual fantasy on how the inner awareness rises, how one can obtain his own rationality and emerge an individual opinion. This piece is all about freedom of a spirit and about the most common freedom that arises from it.
"Beyond" is an attempt to capture a very special moment, when you feel the harmony with the world, when everything around you comes to life at once and suddenly makes perfect sense. Everyone knows this feeling, and this is why everyone can understand the semantic content of the piece, as it is given in the most universal language in the world.
Stop for a moment. Listen to your heartbeat, hold your breath. Hear your friends next to you do the same. Take a deep breath together, take the first pitch together. Feel the harmony between you. Then go Beyond.
"Beyond" was created specially for the 'AEGIS CARMINIS" competition.''
SEAN’S CONCERT CHOIR (Taiwan)
Conductor: Sean Yao
Yu-Shan (1968*)
AN AFTERNOON PLAY OF TAIWANESE DRAMA (Ming-Yu, Chen) - 2014
Formosa Singers
Video concept: Sean Yao
Video editing by: dX creative house
STUDENT CHOIR ONMA NAMED A.V. NEZHDANOVA (Ukraine)
Conductor: Halyna Shpak
Volodymyr Schneider (1985*)
VERBOVAYA DOSHCHECHKA (WILLOW BOARD) (Ukrainian folk song) - 2016
Manuscript
Video concept: Natalia Tsarenko
Video editing by: Eugen Sbarciog
''In this work, the composer did not just create the image of a young girl. Here the performer is the observer. The performers observe and simultaneously paint the atmosphere and beauty of nature. Additional footage convey the lightness of the girl's image, the spaciousness and brightness of nature, the breath of the wind. These side shots are more contrasting to separate the imaginary from reality.''
VOCAL ENSEMBLE “FORTISSIMO” (Bulgaria)
Conductor: Milena Dobreva
Krassimir Kyurkchiyski (1936–2011), Nikolay Stoykov (1936–2020)
BULGARIAN FOLKLORE MEDLEY Folklore - 1976
Manuscript
Video concept: Video Production Studio - Burgas
Video editing by: Video Production Studio – Burgas
''The folklore medley is a story of unrequited love. The story takes us back to the rural meadow. A young and handsome man is singing to a girl he is about to marry. Unfortunately, he doesn’t reciprocate her feelings for him and is trying to tell her that they do not belong together. He is begging her to burn him and dry his life out of his body. His only desire is not to marry her. This is why he makes the decision to enter the church and become a monk. Years later near the monastery he sees a group of girls performing a Bulgarian folklore dance. Attracted by their beauty and innocence, he asks them “Where have you been while I wasn’t a friar?”. The ladies try to seduce him and start tempting him to throw away his robes and go dance with them. In the end this is precisely what he ends up doing.''
CATEGORY A2
ORIANA YOUTH FEMALE CHOIR (Ukraine)
Conductor: Halyna Shpak
Hanna Kopiika (1983*)
ЖИТТЯ - ЯК ВОКЗАЛ ... - LIFE IS LIKE A RAILWAY STATION (Lina Kostenko) - 2020 (/New work)
Manuscript
Video concept: Nataliia Tsarenko
Video editing by: Eugen Sbarciog, Sparchog creative media
''Життя - як вокзал... - Life is like a railway station
“Life is like a railway station” is an allegory piece created by odessa composer Hanna Kopiika to the verses of the outstanding Ukrainian poetess of our time Lina Kostenko.
Lina Kostenko is known all over the world for her revolutionary poetry, revealing the problems of Ukrainian society. In the video, we wanted to express, on the one hand, the instancy and richness of our life, which the poetess compares to a train station, and on the other hand, the loneliness in which each person lives. The noise and sounds of the “station-life" that surround us every day, drown out the true meaning of our existence. When these external noises become less, it is very difficult for us to deal with emerged loneliness. In 2020-2021, people around the world are faced such loneliness when the only way to communicate is online. We recorded the choir remotely because, like everyone else, we faced the inability to get together, rehearse and perform. The video reflects inner loneliness against the background of unnecessary external noises of life-railway station.''
TELKOM UNIVERSITY CHOIR (Indonesia)
Conductor: Aldo Randy Ginting
Ken Steven (1993*)
DIES IRAE A Medieval Latin Poem (latinsko besedilo) - 2014
Ken Steven
Video concept: Telkom University Choir
Video editing by: Ryan Kurnia Pratama
''The concept of this video is a depiction of the Day of Wrath, in which there are shocks in the video and elements of fire, and ashes. In this video there is also The grim reaper on the part as a judge on the day of judgment as conveyed in the sentence "Quando Judex est venturus". Regarding color, this video broadly highlights the color Purple which means majesty and repentance from sin as depicted in the purple fire element at the beginning of the song, the singer costumes, and the purple light in the Pie Jesu part, where this section tells about asking for God's help and forgiveness of sins. This video is also supported by supporting colors such as red which symbolizes fire, gold as a symbol of majesty and holiness, and black as a symbol of darkness. On the last part of the video, it gets more intense and peaks until the end of the song there is an explosion and turns into ashes as conveyed in the sentence Solvet sæclum in favilla which means the world will dissolve in ashes.''
*****
CATEGORY B2
DEKLIŠKI PEVSKI ZBOR GIMNAZIJE CELJE – CENTER (Slovenia)
Conductor: David Preložnik
Leon Firšt (1994*), Jure Tori (1975*)
POTUJEM SAM (Rok Lunaček) - 2020 (New work)
Manuscript
Video concept: David Preložnik in Leon Firšt
Video editing by: Leon Firšt
''The video was created in a completely virtual world. As early as mid-October 2020, we have remote exercises with the choir. It is worth mentioning that the choir is an extracurricular activity and we always had to adjust the dates of rehearsals to the schedule of videoconferencing lessons, other obligations / training of female students and look for dates in the evening. We have not given up and we are guided by the awareness that we keep the choir alive and connected even during distance learning! During the weekly meetings through the MS Teams application, we worked on group dynamics, the condition of the choir and kept the singing mentality flexible and as lively as possible the attitude towards the choir.
This encouraged us to feel a great challenge in the song I TRAVEL ALONE, which was written by Jure Tori, and the choral touch was given to it as a NOVELTY by our successful composer Leon Firšt from Celje (Slovenia): first, the content itself is more than suitable for the time in which we live, and the design of the composition in a choral arrangement is also suitable according to the frameworks of the choir's abilities and for remote recording.
After some time of virtual rehearsals, the group of singers was mature enough to record their own singing line with the help of mobile apps. We carried out the project with a group of singers from the 3rd and 4th year of Gimnazija Celje.
With the arrangements of vocal technical performance, each singer recorded a singing line with a metrically and interpretively coordinated instrumental basis of Leon Firšt's piano playing. The clips were further used for joint editing in Cubase.
The composer Leon Firšt performed to harmonize the sound vertical and add some virtual echo. After the coordinated audio recording, all performers recorded a video while performing the final audio recording. Thus, a video was added to the montage of the audio recording, where all the performers used a coordinated corporate graphic image. The video is therefore designed in the individual world of an individual who travels alone on the path to joint performance…''
*****
CATEGORY C1
CHILDREN'S CHOIR ‘’ANIMA’’ (Russia)
Conductor: Irina Brusova
Zhanneta Metallidi (1934–2019)
RUSSIA´S PEAL OF BELLS (Lyudmila Kozhevnikova) - 2004
Composer – Sanct Peterburg
Video concept: Irina Brusova
Video editing by: Dmitry Poberezhnyuk
''We made this video to tell you with the help of music about bells, as they are an inherent part of the Russian culture.''
CHILDREN'S CHOIR ‘’RYABINKA’’ (Russia)
Conductor: Tatiana Popel´
Alexander Grechaninov (1864–1956)
THE SPELL OF WINTER (Maria Pozharova) – 1911/1912
P. Jurgenson
Video concept: Tatiana Popel´, Ekaterina Glazova
Video editing by: Dmitriy Popel´
''The music of composition is pictorial and original. The choral part is based of the folk song motif. The surrounding world in the verses opens up not as ordinary reality, but a reality full of sicrets, riddles and discoveries.''
CHILDREN'S CHOIR ‘’VESELIE GOLOSA’’ (Russia)
Conductor: Natalia Mazko
Maxim Basok (1951*)
YA NA RADUGE ZHIVU - I LIVE ON THE RAINBOW (Timofey Belozerov) - 2008
OMSK CITY, AMFORA
Video concept: Natalia Mazko
Video editing by: Dmitry Pulikov
''The composition is called "I live on a rainbow." The concept of the video is directly related to the content of the piece of music. It describes child's fantasies about summer nature, about life in a fairy-tale house. All fantasies are associated with bright colors of the rainbow, which either correspond to real life or surprise with the unusual combinations. Music is permeated with light, warmth, childish joy, thoughtful or stormy, mobile.
The video reflects the atmosphere of children's performing arts. It captures girls from the choir, having a rest in nature, as well as charming, enchanting landscape sketches.
Compositionally, the video is built in accordance with the form of a piece of music.''
VOCAL FORMATION “MORSKI PESACHINKI” (Bulgaria)
Conductor: Milena Dobreva
Atanas Iliev (1940*), Milena Dobreva (1962*)
BULGARIAN FOLKLORE MEDLEY -
YA IZGREY, SLYNCE & BRE, PETRUNKO Folklore (ljudsko besedilo) – 2005 / 2013
Manuscript
Video concept: Video Production Studio - Burgas
Video editing by: Video Production Studio - Burgas
''The folklore medley is a story of a mother, singing to son. He is on his death-bed, sick from a mysterious disease. His mother is crying out to the sun, asking it to shine over their yard and bring them light and joy. She is sharing the story for her dying son and begging him to get better so that he could once again see his friends and his betrothed. She wishes for her son to be able to go to the village dances with all his loved ones. Thankfully, her prayers are answered and her son does indeed get better. A few months later the time for the annual festival in their village comes and her son is able to participate. She watches him and his beautiful betrothed Petrunka dance together. They are young and wild – dancing for as long as their legs can carry them. Their innocent display of unwavering love becomes the center of attention – the entire village is engrossed in their dance.''
CATEGORY C2
MLADINSKI PEVSKI ZBOR OŠ FRANCETA BEVKA TOLMIN (Slovenia)
Conductor: Barbara Kovačič
Anej Černe (1994*)
VEČERNA PRAVLJICA (Gregor Strniša) - 2019 (New work)
Manuscript
Video concept: Tereza Gregorič
Video editing by: Andrej Rutar
''VEČERNA PRAVLJICA – description
Isolation, the sudden cessation of the world, in addition to anxiety and loneliness, restored silence and (long) time. As if destiny has given us another opportunity to reflect on what is really important and what it is worth living for. Through which window to look at the world; a screen or a window of your own imagination?
In Večerna pravljica, Strniša takes us into a fantasy world, which carries an abundance of associative material that somehow fits the current feeling of the world. Despite the rich content, we focused on two current problems that are intertwined. Firstly, the consequences of the global epidemiological crisis on the child's well-being, especially the restriction of movement and the ban on contact with peers, and secondly, the global ecological crisis, which knocked on the door of every home.
In the first part, Strniš's mysterious world evokes feelings of horror, created by an almost forgotten fear of the power of nature. In the second stanza, we perceive the struggle between industry and nature, a struggle that is overlooked by the sleeping man. And if so far we have lived in the safe shelter of the achievements of civilization, which is based primarily on the exploitation of natural resources, it has slapped us with the current situation. The third stanza shows people who do not live, but sleep - trapped in their self-sufficiency and passively surrender to the game of dreams.
Children, on the other hand, live their lives as they are much more susceptible to unreasonable feelings that alienated adults no longer perceive. Their direct desire for contact, play, playfulness and the need for healthy fresh air is an example to all of us. Therefore, there is no more appropriate instrument to this song than a child’s voice.''
*****
CATEGORY D1
CHILDREN'S CHOIR PEREZVONY SCHOOL OF ART M. GLINKA (Russia)
Conductor: Larisa Yarutskaya
Ambrož Čopi (1973*)
ALLELUIA. LAUDATE DOMINUM OMNES GENTES (Psalm 116:1) - 2016
Astrum
Video concept: Larisa Yarutskaya
Video editing by: Larisa Yarutskaya
''The work was recorded specially for the competition in Slovenia 12.02.2021. Half of the team members took part in the recording due to the restrictions associated with the epidemic. The work was recorded at school on a video camera.''
SEAN'S CONCERT CHOIR (Taiwan)
Conductor: Sean Yao
Tine Bec (1993*)
AVE MARIS STELLA (Vespers hymn) - 2017
Astrum
Video concept: Sean Yao
Video editing by: dX creative house
''This is the first Slovenian choral work I have been introduced to. Although Latin hymns are not that prevailing in Asia countries, peace always comes to me whenever I listen to this composition. I am really lucky to have an opportunity to hold a live music concert in this difficult moment, because we all know the covid-19 pandemic really influenced our life a lot. Thus, I have chosen Ave, maris stella as part of my program as memory of the friendship between Slovenia and me and also for the sake of bringing peace to whoever listens to the video.''
CATEGORY D2
DEKLIŠKA PEVSKA SKUPINA VESELA POMLAD (Italia)
Conductor: Meta Praček
Jakob Jež (1928*)
TRAVNIČKI SO ŽE ZELENI (slovenska ljudska/Folk song from Slovenia) - 1994
Naši zbori
Video concept: OPS Vesela pomlad
Video editing by: Simon Prašnikar
''The girl singing group Vesela pomlad (The joyful spring) from Opicina, Italy recorded the piece Travnički so že zeleni (The meadows are already green) especially for the choral competition Aegis Carminis 2021. It is the fifth virtual video the girls have recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic related lockdown and it took approximately 3 weeks to make. The girls first captured the audio and video recordings using so called pilot recordings – reference recordings containing individual pre-recorded voices. They used their own mobile phones to record themselves and sent the recordings via e-mail or WeTransfer to their conductor, who then carefully listened through them all. Some girls had to do multiple recordings due to various “flaws” (i.e. background noises, errors in the lyrics etc.). The singers recorded their singing at home, therefore they had to find a room that was as acoustically dry as possible. Similarly, the videos used to create the story were filmed at their homes and in their surroundings during April of 2021. The girls based the story of the video on the lyrics of the piece or filmed a charming video in line with the theme. Added throughout is also a sign language video, contributed by the singer Martina Sosič, otherwise a student at the France Prešeren classical lyceum. She has been actively interested in this type of language and the world of the deaf in general since 2018 and has also used her knowledge to participate as an interpreter in the national volunteer action helping the deaf serve food and drinks in the mountain huts. For this opportunity she has also taught her fellow singers some of the signs, which they used to finish off the piece.
The cover art was created by one of the youngest singers, the 13 year old Anja De Luisa, who, alongside singing, enjoys drawing in her free time as well.''
