For the first time in Riga will be performed “Bow in the Sky” / Article by the award-winning American composer Kyle Smith

The Riga Project Choir doesn’t rehearse often, just a couple of times a year. And as the name suggests, it joins the projects. These rehearsals are special for the choir. They feature award-winning American composer Kyle Smith and the choir prepares his internationally acclaimed opera “The Bow in the Sky” for concerts. It is heard for the first time in Latvia.

Riga Project Choir artistic director, director Kristofers Walš-Sinka, says: “In my opinion, his music is the best of contemporary American composers. That’s why I had the idea that something had to be brought to Latvia, and when I founded this chorus five years ago, from the very beginning I didn’t really want to take a lot of American stuff because I didn’t want my reputation to be an American conducting only American music, but then enough time passed and then I thought it was time to take exactly this music.”

The composer defined this music with the texts of Robert Lax a “pilgrimage for an a cappella choir”. He is pleased with how this pilgrimage sounds in the voices of Riga residents: “The sound of this choir is truly amazing, the singers’ voices sound very warm, sweet and powerful. The choirs sing with great love and skill. I am touched.”

It is extremely difficult material for a singer, admits Māra Rozenberga, singer of the Riga Project Choir, stating at the same time: “But now that we have studied it intensely for seven weeks and are ready to sing, the result is extremely harmonious. very pleasant to listen to. “

“If you delve into the words, a beautiful poem about the one song we sing, which is the truth. Very inspiring. It is unusual and different from the music we maybe listen to and sing more, from Latvian music. But it is very interesting,” he says. singer Gatis Didrichsons.

On Saturday 8 October, the Kyle Smith concert program will be performed in the Ziedonis Hall of the Latvian National Library and on Sunday in the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in Daugavpils. In both concerts the composer will also be present in the stands as a special guest.