Choir director’s seminar and other important dates

A few notes:

a) Over the next few weeks, you will see that North American Lithuanian Song Festival’s Facebook page will change its name from 2015 to 2025, along with a new profile pic and cover photo for the upcoming Song Festival. We will begin disseminating information via social media, as well as on the Song Festival’s website. We ask for your help to share these festival announcements as widely as possible, to create a whirlwind of interest and joy to participate in it! After all, our choir directors’ network is broad, and each of us is the “ambassador” of the song festival in our local community, whether big or small!

b) Start gathering your choir members, especially if there is no permanent choir in your community! We would ask choirs to register starting in May and to begin providing approximate number of participants. This will help us prepare the right number of repertoire books to hand out right at the beginning of the next choral season, as well as to plan various logistical details, such as to ensure that we have enough hotel rooms blocked. We have participant estimates based the previous song festival, but we want to check, especially after the pandemic. In many places, when restarting our choirs, we experienced a membership surge! The choir regulars returned, as did “new” old choristers (i.e., those who sang in their youth but not since), and some new faces joined as well. We hope that those who bring their choirs together again now will have a similar experience! As usual, choir member registration will take place starting in the fall. You will receive links to the registration forms.

c) Probably the most exciting date on the list is the Choir directors’ seminar! Save the date: Thursday, August 15th (arrival from 5 p.m.) until Sunday, August 18. (departure by noon). We will share the weekend’s rich and fun agenda very soon. The seminar will be an opportunity to get acquainted with the 2025 Song Festival repertoire, to renew ourselves creatively, as well as to strengthen our ties with one another, so that when we return to our cities, we can fire up our singers and properly prepare them for the Song Festival and have colleagues to lean on throughout the year.

All choir directors whose choirs plan to participate in the Song Festival are invited. We also encourage one member of the choir to participate with the director. This person can be the choir president, your right-hand, or anyone else of your choosing.

If we reach out to you for help with a session or an evening program, we hope you will accept!

Finally, we do not want to miss the opportunity to thank the artistic directors of the previous North American Lithuanian Song Festivals – Rita Čyvaitė-Kliorienė, Dalia Skrinskaitė-Viskontienė and Darius Polikaitis – and their committees for laying such a solid foundation from which to build, for the support, encouragement, and advice they have provided us so far.

We look forward to sharing the plans for the upcoming Song Festival, which started being prepared behind the scenes even before the pandemic, more and more!

There is no event that uplifts and unites our nation more than a celebration of Lithuanian national song or dance. It is exactly that unity that we seek to foster having chosen the theme of the 2025 Song Festival – “One Family – One Nation.” It does not matter what corner of the world we live in; we are united by our Lithuanian cultural heritage and our homeland LIETUVA. We look forward to seeing you all in Cleveland in 2025, where we will collectively celebrate our Song Festival!

With best wishes,

Kristina Kliorys & Aleksandras Stankevičius

On behalf of the 2025 North American Lithuanian XI Song Festival team