The World Choral Day
An international choral event to extol the values of solidarity, peace and understanding!
The World Choral Day is an initiative of Alberto Grau from the Latin American Vice-Presidency of the International Federation for Choral Music, proposed and approved by the General Assembly of IFCM held in Helsinki in August, 1990, within the framework of the 2nd World Symposium on Choral Music:
"The world is living through severe and continuous crisis of self destruction. There are no possible reasons that can justify these actions. The majority of the human race wants to live in peace with dignity. It is time to show, with more power and strength, that our choral family contributes, through music to break down the artificial barriers product of politics, different ideologies, religious differences, and racial hatred that separate human beings. We must be able to show that MUSIC, the divine art, is more than the mere search of formal perfection and interpretative beauty, music should serve to extol the values of solidarity, peace, and understanding . We cannot work isolated, we have to make all possible efforts to have our voices heard and to let music work its own paths of communication."
These are the main goals of the World Choral Day.
Thousands of choirs have joined in the celebration of World Choral Day on or around the 2nd Sunday in December in the past twenty years. Millions of singers across the globe have been involved in World Choral Day concerts, festivals, sing-alongs, choral seminars, Days of Friendship and other events.
A World Choral Day event may take many different forms. However, it typically includes this:
- someone reading the World Choral Day Proclamation. It has thus far been translated into many different languages and is available for download from the World Choral Day and IFCM websites.
- Theme: The IFCM announces themes for World Choral Day. In the year 2011 the theme will be “Solidarity”. Many people are suffering because of disasters, earthquakes, tsunamis, draught, hunger, poverty, terror, war, and so on and so forth. All over the world choirs are expressing their solidarity with the victims of these catastrophies, sometimes raising money, often raising awareness or singing to help people deal with these issues or overcome their grief. Choirs are invited to do something with this topic of “solidarity”, either in connection with the proclamation (see below) or musically or both.
- Choirs wanting to be involved in World Choral Day can use the official WCD logo.
We are inviting you to announce your World Choral Day activities - and to tell everyone about it afterwards:
- Very soon you will be able to enter your event on www.ifcm.net. Let the world know WHAT EVENTS you are taking part in or organizing, HOW MANY people will be involved, WHERE it is taking place and WHO is/are responsible. (The press in your country will be looking for this!)
- And fill in afterwards HOW it all worked out
We would like to publish videos and pictures of the events on our special World Choral Day channel on Youtube. You can upload your video using the following address: ah0vgwsl7s2a@m.youtube.com.
All you have to do is compose an email message and attach the video file as a mail attachment. Enter a relevant subject line to the email message, e.g. “Choir Name, Conductor’s name, country, WorldChoralDay2011”.
You can then watch your own and your colleagues’ contributions on www.youtube.com/WorldChoralDay.
Thank you for making a case for Choral Music on World Choral Day!
You can contact us at
project.manager@worldchoralday.org Francesco Leonardi, General Information
africanregion@worldchoralday.org: Rudolph de Beer, Coordinator for African Region
asianregion@worldchoralday.org: Jennifer Tham, Coordinator for Asian Region
europeanregion@worldchoralday.org: Jeroen Schrijner, Coordinator for European Region
latinamericanregion@worldchoralday.org: Diego Lenger, Coordinator for Latin American Region
northamericanregion@worldchoralday.org: Cristian Grases, Coordinator for North Amercian Region
pacificregion@worldchoralday.org: Stephen Leek, Coordinator for the Pacific Region
download the proclamation