Derry International Choir Festival: Singers from across the world at event

More than 100 choirs from around the world are arriving in Londonderry for one of the UK's largest choral festivals.

Choristers from Sweden, Estonia, France, Germany, the UK and Ireland will rub shoulders with local singers of all ages for the four-day City of Derry International Choir Festival.

Now in its 14th year, a record number of choirs are taking part with a variety of performances and competitions.

It opens on Thursday with a gala concert at the Millennium Forum, featuring the Ulster Orchestra and Festival Chorus under the direction of newly-appointed chief conductor Anna Handler.

Entitled Beethoven – Triumph & Transcendence, the concert will also feature soloists Gemma Summerfield, Ryan Vaughan Davies and Alex Birkus.

Handler told BBC New NI the Derry festival's growth is testament to the power of live choral music to bring people together.

"People come because they want to hear real performance. They want to see human engagement but also human trial," she said.

"When you see people doing something that they love, when you see their passion and when you see their engagement…. You can not get that through listening on headphones or through streaming music," Handler, who is making her festival debut, added.

Opening night, she said, will see "three amazing soloists, soprano, tenor and bass, a great chorus and very agile and vital orchestra" grace the Millennium Forum stage.

The audience can expect "energy as well as reflection and introspection", the German-Colombian conductor said, adding she knows a Derry audience will be as "warm and welcoming" as they have been when she has conducted previously in the city.

"It is very exciting to be back, much of the opening night programme is now not often performed," she said.

On Friday, Grammy-nominated vocal ensemble Tenebrae will perform at the Guildhall, followed by a late-night concert at the historic St Columb's Cathedral featuring The Apex Singers and their distinctive eight-part a cappella folk arrangements.

The Oak Tree of Derry International Competition will take place at the Guildhall on Saturday, bringing some of the festival's leading visiting choirs together to compete.

The event will conclude on Sunday with a closing gala and awards ceremony at the Millennium Forum.

Speaking to BBC Radio Foyle's North West Today programme , festival director Dónal Doherty said the key to its success was community involvement.

"There's over 100 choirs in the festival altogether and 60 of those will be performing as part of the community programme.

"It's incredible and that's going to happen throughout Derry, Limavady, Strabane, Donegal with a choral trail and concerts in Letterkenny as well, this year developing on last year's choral trail.

"There will be pop-up performances throughout the city as well as concerts in community centres and in care homes and it's just incredible."

The event was born out of Derry's year as City of Culture in 2013 and Doherty said was now reaching a global audience while becoming increasingly embedded in the community each year.

"The international choirs that we have performing, their conductors, their members, the international panel of adjudicators, we work very hard to make sure that they become advocates of the festival, wherever they go back to throughout the world and promote the festival and that's what we're beginning to see," he said.

"We're beginning to see choirs now putting 'Derry October' into their calendar and for international choirs, in fact for any choirs to travel to Derry, it must be planned not a year in advance," he said, explaining many choirs are showing interest two or three years ahead of the event.

That indicates a "maturing" of the festival, he said.

"It's evidence also of genuinely the word going out that this is a quality festival and it's a beautiful place to come to - whatever the weather - and in terms of the welcome that they're guaranteed, which has been a consistent message from 2013 in our first festival, the warmth of the welcome is special."

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