Returning to the World Youth Choir: Alumni Session 2023

A few days ago, the World Youth Choir Alumni Session 2023 came to an end, marking my third experience with an ensemble that has had a profound influence on my musical journey.

From 3 to 12 June, 40 World Youth Choir alumni from 26 countries came together for the ensemble’s first session after a four-year break. Over ten intensive days, we rehearsed and toured through Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary.

Simply being able to return to the World Youth Choir carried a special meaning for me. After participating in the 2017 and 2018 sessions and the pandemic, I had thought that age restrictions meant my time with the ensemble had come to an end. Being invited to take part in the Alumni Session was therefore an unexpected and deeply meaningful opportunity to return to the people, music and unique way of working together that had shaped so much of my earlier experience.

My return to the World Youth Choir was actually meant to happen earlier. I had been selected for the World Youth Choir Alumni Session 2021, planned to take place in Dallas, Texas, USA, where the ensemble was due to perform at the National Conference of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA).

It was the first alumni session I had been selected for following my previous WYC experiences, and an opportunity I had been very much looking forward to. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference moved to an online format and the planned World Youth Choir session and performances in Dallas were cancelled.

That made the 2023 Alumni Session even more meaningful to me. After several years of waiting, and at a point when I had already begun to think that the age limit meant I would never return to the World Youth Choir, I finally had the opportunity to become part of the ensemble once again.

Working with Zoltán Pad Again

I was particularly happy to have the opportunity to work once again with conductor Zoltán Pad, with whom I had already worked during my very first World Youth Choir session in 2017.

Returning to his way of working six years later, with considerably more experience of my own, was particularly interesting. Meeting the same conductor at a very different point in your own development gives you an opportunity to recognise how much you have changed as a musician, while also discovering how certain ideas and experiences remain with you for years.

For our concerts in Grožnjan and Ljubljana, we also worked with guest conductor Sebastjan Vrhovnik, while Zoltán Pad conducted the Hungarian part of the tour.

From Grožnjan to Budapest

The session began with rehearsals in Grožnjan, where we gave our first concert on 6 June. From there, the tour continued to Ljubljana before taking us to Hungary.

One of the highlights of the entire experience for me was our concert on 10 June in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest.

Performing with the World Youth Choir on the stage of an institution with such an extraordinary musical history was a tremendous honour. Thinking of the generations of composers, performers and teachers associated with the Academy made the occasion particularly exciting, and being able to stand on that stage as part of an international ensemble is an experience I will remember for a very long time.

We concluded the tour with a concert at St Michael’s Cathedral in Veszprém, bringing ten intense days of rehearsing, performing and making music together to a close.

Returning to Something I Thought Had Ended

From my very first session, the World Youth Choir has represented much more to me than simply a choir. It is a place where people from entirely different countries, languages and musical traditions come together in a remarkably short time around the same idea and become a single ensemble.

That is precisely why returning this year meant so much to me. I had believed that this chapter of my life was already behind me, but the Alumni Session gave me the chance to return to it several years later, bringing new experience and a different perspective with me.

Singing with the World Youth Choir again, reconnecting with old friends, meeting colleagues from other generations of the ensemble and working with Zoltán Pad once more felt simultaneously familiar and completely new.

And performing in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy was the perfect reminder of just how far music can take us, even when we think a particular journey has already come to an end.