Viva Golden at the Nasa pesem 2022

In the competition, which took place under the watchful eye of an international jury, Viva received for the first time 90.7 points out of 100 and thus became one of the eight best choirs that received the gold plaque.

We also received a special award for the best performance of an original Slovene novelty, written after September 2021, namely for the composition of our choir member Krištof Strnad: VESNA, boginja pomladi (The goddess of spring). You can listen to the performance in the video at the end of the article, where you can also see the photos taken by Janez Eržen.

Three prominent Slovene masters of choral tactics were part of the jury. It was chaired by the Maribor artist Karmina Šilec, who just recently received a prestigious award from the Dutch Music Theatre Now, otherwise, her name is mainly associated with the band Carmina Slovenica, which unfortunately went silent a few years ago. Another member of the jury was Martina Batič, also a world-renowned conductor, who has been working in Paris since 2018 as the music director of the French Radio Choir. Ambrož Čopi is also a well-known and respected name in the field of choral singing at home and around the world. He is the conductor of two of the most successful mixed choirs in our country, the KGBL Chamber Choir and the Academic Choir of the University of Primorska, and a promoter of Slovenian choral creativity abroad and often a juror at international competitions. The jury also included two foreign representatives, namely Bengt Ollén, a prominent Swedish conductor who won the Grand Choir Prize of Europe on the Maribor stage with his Sofia Vokalensamble in 2012, and the Latvian Jānis Ozols. The latter has already competed in Maribor’s Union Hall, namely in 2019, when he won the Gallus International Competition with the excellent Mixed Choir of the Latvian Academy of Music Jāzeps Vītols from Rig. He is also the director of the Latvian International Baltic Sea Choir Competition in Jurmala.

The president of the jury Karmina Šilec said at the end of the competition ‘’Yes, it is true, I have followed Naša pesem many times as a judge, but I have never been as surprised and happy as this year. I have no words. We were very worried; we could not imagine what would be the result of such a long absence from regular work or such difficult circumstances. What happened at this stage is a miracle. The level of singing is as if there was no epidemic at all. An exceptional competition, good presentations, new works, full of freshness, again a new language of the younger generations. It was a lovely experience for all of us.’’

At this year’s competition, we also publicly announced a change in the choirs’ artistic leadership. Our Simona will soon be succeeded as choirmaster by her son, a student of composition at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana and our choir member, Krištof Strnad.

A competition for the best depiction of the Holy Intonation took place during the epidemic, in which the majority of Viva’s team, the so-called "Working group for research, implementation and promotion of aliquot intonation sciences over time" participated. The results of this competition were also announced at the 2022 Naša pesem, and our team celebrated another victory.

Amir Tokić (English translation by Aljaž Arh)