IX Lithuanian Song Festival

On July 4 of this year, I had the pleasure of attending the ninth annual Lithuanian Song Festival (IX Dainu Svente) at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga. The festival returned to Toronto after a 32-year dry spell, making it a very important event in the Lithunian cultural community as well as the choral community worldwide. I've included a link to a brief overview of the festival's history:

I arrived to the event expecting to see an enormous group of largely Lithuanian people singing together. I was correct to expect a large turn out for the Lithuanian (as well as Latvian) community but I was wrong to assume that the audience was sing with the performers. Perhaps what I envisioned was more alike to scenes from the film The Singing Revolution - crowds of ordinary people gathered together to sing folksongs. Instead what I found was the traditional concert set-up; the audience sat on one side, the singers on the other. At times, one of the conductors would invite the audience to sing along to the words shown on a large screen above the singers. A type of choral karaoke, one might call it. I understand that there is a logistical difficulty with having a concert in a Canadian city where everyone mixes together. Yet I hoped that they would, as to try and recreate the effect so distinct to Baltic song festival culture.

Still, I had no reason to be disappointed. The concert featured several ensembles from Lithuania, Canada and the United States and incorporated elements of visual and performing arts. At one point, a group of adorable young children dressed as daisies danced unto the stage, evoking innumerable 'aw's from the audience. Overall, I would rate the event highly on a scale of entertainment and musicianship value. I look forward to potentially travelling to the 2013 All-Estonian Song Festival in Tallinn and witnessing the 'song festival' culture on a larger scale.