Western Morning News (Saturday)
Choir festival spreads its wings
World class composers have descended on Cornwall from Seattle, Shanghai and Surrey to claim their prizes in a hotly-contested competition run as part of the biennial International Male Choral Festival.
Kari Cruver Medina from the USA, Norwegian Jens Peter Jongepier who lives and works in China, and Ian Assersohn from Epsom in Surrey, arrived at Truro College where the awards ceremony and premiere performances of their compositions were live-streamed to worldwide audiences.
All three composers were overwhelmed by the rendition of their music by Truro School Barbershop Boys and choral scholars from Truro Cathedral, conducted by Cornwall International Male Choral Festival artistic director Gareth Churcher.
The winning pieces will also be performed at next year’s festival – the largest event of its kind in the world – which runs from the May 2 to 6. More than 60 choirs from across the globe will gather for more than 50 concerts and events in 40 venues right across Cornwall.
“It’s the first time in the festival’s fifteen-year history that we have opened our prestigious competition to composers beyond the UK and the response has been absolutely astonishing,” said Gareth. “We had more entries than ever with 49 composers from as far away as Russia and New Zealand, as well as 28 from the UK. It just shows how this fabulous event has grown in stature and reputation on a world stage.”
The quality and quantity of the entries created tough decisions for competition adjudicator Alan
Bullard – but finally Kari Medina’s complex and powerful setting of the Robert Burns poem Winter Has Come won her the top prize of £1,000, along with the Harold and Thelma Miller Trophy.
Alan said: “Kari’s winning composition communicates well the stormy winter and the rising of the spring with punchy rhythms and metre changes. This
piece brings something different and liberating to the male voice choir world and a confident performance will be exciting for both performers and audiences alike.”
Kari is a Seattle-based composer and pianist whose work spans a broad range of stylistic traditions and whose music has been featured across the United States
and abroad, with choral and orchestral works premiered recently in both Europe and Asia.
On winning the international competition she said: “This has been such an opportunity for me – to come to this beautiful county of Cornwall with its incredible male voice choral tradition and to hear the boys singing my work is amazing.
“I did not throw friendly parts to them – some of those notes were stratospheric and they just went for it. The rhythm is really challenging and they did a fantastic job.”
Ian Assersohn, a composer, arranger and choral director who won the competition in 2014, came away with a top prize of £1,000 in the Cambiata category with Slow Down, his composition for young male voices. He also took third prize in the main competition with When I Set Out For Lyonesse, pipped for second place by composer, musician and music teacher Jens Jongpier’s composition The Blue of Distance.
With the 2019 festival’s emphasis on the young singers who will take the male choral tradition into the future, Ian said it was a challenge and a privilege to compose a winning piece of music specifically for voices which are changing.
“Writing a cambiata piece is not like writing for any other group,” he said. “I had to do a lot of scientific reading to understand what was required and how it would work and I was really pleased with the result.”
The last festival, in 2017, was a huge cultural and economic success for Cornwall with more than three thousand singers of all ages and nationalities performing for more than thirty thousand people in venues from the Minack Theatre to St Michael’s Mount and from Mevagissey to Bude.
Full details of the 2019 Cornwall International Male Choral Festival, including films and photographs from previous events, can be found at cimcf.uk, and concert tickets will be available from the end of November through the festival website or via hallforcornwall.org.uk To see and hear the composers competition awards ceremony visit youtube.com/watch?v=RI7rknBXkQM