Nickell’s Bag

Jon Salmonson was mesmerized by the Georgian quartet. His wife, Kay, thought the Michigan choir was “just great.”

Joan Olson loved the South Koreans. Her husband, Don, was most struck by the home team — our own Missoula Youth Choir.

Speaking with audience members prior to Saturday night’s grand finale concert of the Missoula International Choral Festival, it only took ten conversations to hear some special mention of all twelve choirs that participated in this year’s four-day festival.

“I just think the overall quality was really good, with every choir I heard this year,” said Jon Salmonson.

“You think you’ve heard it all,” added Kay, “and then a choir comes up that surprises you.”

That’s the hallmark of this grand Missoula tradition; and it certainly played out on Saturday night, when all twelve festival choirs joined up at Washington-Grizzly Stadium for a diverse concert of music under the wide blue sky.

“Music in this stadium is pretty rare,” noted emcee Ian Marquand as the Festival’s first-ever outdoor finale concert began (in past years, the finale has taken place in the Adams Center).

Addressing the assembled choirs, Marquand added, “a couple of years ago, there was a group from England who sang here. We like to say they broke the place in for you. So when you go home you can tell everyone that the Rolling Stones were your opening act.”

Rock-n-roll was, in the end, about the only thing missing from Saturday’s concert, which – like the festival’s prior concerts on Wednesday through Friday – featured a dizzying variety of musical genres, singing styles, harmonic textures, and even some theatre.

The Gyeongju City Chorale from South Korea was once again the most showy, opening their two-song set with a Korean Farmer’s Folk Song that featured drummers, dancers, voice soloists, and elaborate choreography; it was as much a miniature opera as a song. The strong-voiced singers brought the audience to its feet more than once.

The Georgian quartet of chant-song specialists from the Church of St. Panteleimon the Healer proved the beautiful potential at the opposite extreme, mesmerizing the crowd with a pair of songs that echoed the varied influences of their home country in the Caucasus: elaborate Arabic ornamentation; sustained notes that echoed with the influence of Russian orthodox liturgical traditions.

Dr. Shan-Min Yu, the American-trained conductor of the Tainan Chamber Choir of Taiwan, again displayed her magnetic Broadway flair in a solo with her small choir. The Rocky Mountain “Fourteeners” Children’s Choir burned through a confident and powerful rendition of Ernani Aguiar’s difficult “Psalm 150.” The Missoula Youth Choir wowed the audience with a beautiful adaptation of Jean Sibelius’ “Finlandia” by local composer Nita Smith. And the Alumni Chorus of UC-Berkeley thrilled the crowd with a surprise gift: a hearty rendition of “Up With Montana.”

In the end, as twilight grew long on the field, diverse voices gave way to one luminous unity, as the massed choirs and audience joined together in singing the familiar melody, “Dona Nobis Pacem” (“Grant Us Peace”), and a turn through “Auld Lang Syne.”

With that, the festival closed. The singers began to disperse back out into the world – some to homes just down the street, others to homelands far away. As the audience poured out into the streets, chatting about the highlights of the evening, the question of “Auld Lang Syne” was already, self-evidently, answered: these new acquaintances won’t soon be forgot.

So….what was your favorite memory from the festival?

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