“The main essence of the choir and the power of everything is singing together!” The conductor of several choirs reveals how he prepared the singers for the remote song festival! | Without Taboo

Conductor Elīza Dūma has been devoting all her energy to four choirs for at least ten years! We meet him at the Riga Technical University Secondary School of Engineering, where the rehearsals of the mixed choir “Choice” take place.

Eliza admits that the profession of a conductor is quite complicated, you have to invest all your soul and energy. She also teaches young people, who initially thought that the conductor was just standing and moving his hands, but this was not the case.

I can agree with the statement that the conductor is a mirror of the choir, because the conductor must be able to hold everyone together. By the way, I was very lucky with the teachers who taught me. It was hard, but at no point do I want to give up everything by hand.

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Eliza herself has already participated in at least eight song festivals, this year she would have led three bands. Many of the singers of the choir “Izvēle” have not yet participated in any song festivals, so they can only imagine how everyone would get together on the big Mežaparks stage.

Of course, for students who have not experienced the real feeling of a holiday at all, it is exciting to participate remotely, according to Eliza.

In this whole process, I tried to stop my adult thinking, because I already know what a song festival really is, in my opinion, they should be like that, not different. For children who don’t have a song festival experience, any event is an event, including filming a joint video under all conditions, but it’s better than nothing.

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It is quite difficult for a choir conductor to imagine attempts to make a remote call, so everyone practiced at home. In the voice message, Eliza sang a version for each choir that needed to be repeated.

Eliza

did not make remote attempts during the pandemic

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I am the person who believes that the main essence of the choir and the power of everything is singing together. That’s why I didn’t go for Zoom rehearsals or individual singing. Of course, this way you can keep in touch with the singers, but it does not maintain the atmosphere of the choir, and why choirs are still an important part of culture.

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During the e-song festival, the choirs came together only to participate in video filming. In fact, there have been several such meetings that the singers cannot list all of them. The choirs also had to submit their sung version of a song, which was then put together into one video.

Although the feeling of celebration was gone this year, everyone is satisfied with what has been done. By the way, during the pandemic in the spring, the choir celebrated its fifth anniversary.

Eliza is firmly committed to taking her choir to the Song Festival, so everyone has decided to start the General Latvian Song and Dance Festival, which will hopefully take place in person.

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