LBCC Best in the World: First Place Winners in Latvia Choir Games

The Chamber Choir after receiving World Champion status at the World Choir Games.
Photo Courtesy of James Reddan.

On July 18 James Reddan led 34 LBCC Choir members as they competed in the 8th annual World Choir Games in Riga, Latvia. Attending for the first time, they brought home three awards: 1st place, 2nd place, and 4th place in respective categories. 

The newly crowned world champions competed among 73 countries and 500 choirs for their title. They embarked on a long journey to get to Latvia, and it started a year ago.

The trip was self-funded and each student had to pay $3,500. It was a group effort.

Reddan, director of choral activities, and his students spent the months prior working at the concession stands at Oregon State University sports games. Through a sponsorship deal with OSU they received a portion of the sales for the trip. 

They also performed concerts on the LBCC campus with ticket sales applied to the trip. They recycled a lot of bottles and cans. Students' families donated as well as the LBCC foundation. 

To qualify for attending the 2014 Games in Latvia, the choir competed in the 2011 American International Choral Festival in Reno, NV and placed with all silver diplomas. The organizers were the same for both the Festival and the Games therefore they received an automatic invitation. 

Before reaching their final destination of Riga, they performed twice on their historic tour of medieval towns and churches in the Baltic region of Europe. Those performances were educational and not part of the competition.

"Getting to perform in marvelous historical venues and move the audience that is completely unfamiliar with our work was a highlight of each performance," said Reddan.

Each performance was packed with locals. 

One venue was in the 900-year-old St. Nicholas church in Tallinn, Estonia. With high vaulted ceilings and arches, and its walls of the stone, the church opened on a Monday specifically for their performance.

"It was there that I really understood how beautiful choral music can be. It felt to me that choir music was meant to be sung in that kind of environment, where the sound continued for ten seconds after the group stopped singing. I have never heard anything more beautiful," said Melinda Ehlers, an Alto in the Concert Choir.

In Tallinn the students had a walking tour of the city, the biggest in Estonia, with a history dating back 5,000 years. It's cobblestone streets and massive stone buildings, many erected during the Crusades, still exist today. The choir took advantage of the acoustics the city streets provided and had two impromptu performances to promote their formal ones.

Students tour Tallinn, Estonia and pose with a period-dressed knight.
Photo courtesy of James Redden.

In Helsinki, Finland the group also toured the city, its marketplaces, and cathedrals. Immersing themselves in local culture, they had a group dinner eating reindeer and salmon.

"Every place we visited was just as curious to our culture as we were to theirs," said Katharine Dunigan, a Soprano in the Chamber Choir.

When the choir finally arrived in Riga, Latvia they were welcomed to the country in The Parade of Nations in preparation for the competition. The parade was broadcasted live on Latvia TV. Reddan was the flag bearer representing the United States so the LBCC choir were the first to march of the 26 attending U.S. choirs.

"While we were parading down the street with 73 other countries, people were shouting out to us that they loved the USA and wished us much luck. I have never experienced anything like it before and will never forget the amount of support and kindness we felt being welcomed by what seemed like the entire city of Riga," said Ehlers. 

At the competition there were three categories. Musica Sacra A cappella was performed by the Chamber Choir placing second. The open competition for Mixed Chamber Choirs also represented by the Chamber Choir placed first. And, the Musica Contemporanea category was performed by the Concert Choir placing fourth.

"Every time our group wasn't called I got more and more excited and nervous. Then the screen said, 'The Open Mixed Chamber Choir winners go to...,' that's when my heart stopped. I started to tear up and I realized we were the winners before they even said our name.  It was and will be one of the most memorable experiences of my life," said Dunigan.

There were five judges in each category: how in tune the choir sang, how true they stayed to the composer's intent, and overall score for sound and artistic impression. The scores were then averaged by each category and by each of the judge's individual scores.

"To place high, all five have to agree on where you should be," said Reddan.

"I could tell how much heart was put into the performance from the whole Chamber Choir. I believe the judges also saw how much we put into it. I believe that's why we won. They saw our love for singing and knew we meant it," said Dunigan.

The Chamber Choir had the second highest overall score in the entire competition regardless of category and was only four points away from a perfect score. The program book was 450 pages long, listing each song performed in the two-day showcase, so competition was plentiful.

"All of the performances moved me literally to tears. They performed their hearts out on the world stage and they belonged there. They earned everything they got," said Reddan.

His advice to his students was to do the best they could in that moment of time.

"If you walk off that stage doing the best you can then you've already won. They only know you for 15 minutes in time, so make it count."

The challenge of an international singing competition is to communicate the song through body language and emotion. The singers must tell a story, feel it and understand its history. When singing in foreign tongue, which some songs were, they had to learn its translation in order to convey it.

"A singer is always an actor. You have to act the part," said Reddan. "Your body is your instrument."

After a 10-day whirlwind adventure, taking two days to get home, sleeping on a ferry across the Baltic sea, then on planes and buses, the group arrived home in the early hours of July 21.

"These are the types of experiences that will prepare [the students] to function in a global world," said Reddan. "This is what it means to  make the world your classroom."

The choir visiting a historic rock church in Helsiki, Finland.
Photo courtesy of James Reddan.