Vocal Blog | The Vocal, A Cappella & Choral Music Online-Mag

by Dave Bernstein (Acatribe) and Florian Städtler (Vocal Blog)

Uploaded by blogging buddies Dave Bernstein and Florian Städtler, this list is the result of successful social media crowdsourcing. Thanks for sharing your favourite a cappella events: Joep Hopstaken, Tine Fris, Jeanine Rondas, Michele Manzotti and Casey Gallas.

This list is by no means complete and will be updated on a regular basis. We hope that someday there’ll be one central global source for all these dates and events. Until we got that, stay tuned with Acatribe and Vocal Blog, where regular updates will be made.

2012

EUROPE

Jan 12-14, 2012
London A Cappella Festival (UK)
Hosted by 5-times Grammy winners the Swingle Singers, the festival has quickly become both a top-notch concert and educational event and the meeting point for European and North American a cappella artists and fans.
www.londonacappellafestival.co.uk

Jan 13-15, 2012
VocCologne, Köln (GER)
One top act (2011: The Real Group, 2012: maybebop, 2013: ?) and a fantastic workshop programme hosted by Cologne Musikhochschule.
http://voccologne.hfmt-koeln.de

March 17-18, 2012
EverySing! Festival, Ville de Montlouis-sur-Loire (FRA)
France A Cappella exists – thanks to new festivals like EverySing! The 2012 festival will
feature concerts and workshops with Postyr Project (DEN), singer Youn Sun Nah (Korea), Ommm (FRA) and Peder Karlsson (The Real Academy).
www.cepravoi.fr

April 20-29 April 2012
Festival für Vokalmusik Leipzig (GER)
Hosted by Germany’s most successful classical vocal group Amarcord, Leipzig has brought almost every international super group to Bach’s hometown. The 2012 festival features the hosts in the opening concert, English rising stars VOCES8 and many more shows from pop to jazz, from classical to world music.
www.a-cappella-festival.de

May 3-5, 2012
A Cappella Festival Appenzell (SWI)
One of smaller European vocal music festivals, but always worth a trip.
www.acappella-appenzell.ch

May 5-13, 2012
A Cappella Woche Hannover (GER)
A week of pro concert groups shows. 2012 will feature headliner The Real Group, who will also be coaching ensembles during their stay.
www.acappellawoche.com
March-May 2012
Stimmakrobaten Festival (GER)
Concert series with 10-15 pro and semi-pro vocal groups in the beautiful surroundings of the Sauerland mountains
www.stimmakrobaten.de

June 7-10, 2012
Chorfest in Frankfurt (GER)
Choir meeting including concerts and workshops.
www.chorfest.de

June 16-17, 2012
Solevoci A-Cappella International Contest (ITA)
Italy’s most successful vocal music event with both competition and international festival.
www.solevocifestival.it

July 23-26, 2012
vokal total, 13th International A Cappella Competition, Graz (AUT)
Europe’s most prestigious a cappella competition; opening day with „Emperor of the Mic“ beatbox competition.
www.vokal.at

August 4-11, 2012
Vocal Pop & Jazz Days, Oberhausen (GER)
www.vpjd.nl

August 16-19, 2012
The Real Vocal Festival, Stockholm (SWE)
This festival, in Sweden will feature such European powerhouses as The Real Group, Rajaton, Postyr Project, the Swingle Singers, and Jake Moulton, among others. With a lineup like that, there is simply no reason (other than perhaps expense) not to go.
www.therealacademy.se

August 23-27, 2012
Ohrid Choir Festival (Macedonia)
www.ohridchoirfestival.com

September 13-16, 2012
Acappellica, Hamburg (GER)
First season for the new Hamburg a cappella event. Good luck!
www.nordstarter.org/acappellica

October 2012
Fool Moon International A Cappella Festival (HUN)
Hosted by Hungarian No. 1 vocal group Fool Moon.
http://acappella.hu

October 2012
Zoom+ Festival, Trnva (Slowakia)
www.zoomplus.sk

October 9 – November 9, 2012
Voice Mania,  Vienna (AUT)
Austria’s leading festival of vocal music: One month packed with amateur, semi-pro and pro shows in a beautiful city.
www.voicemania.at

October 12 -  December 8, 2012
Vokal Total / Spectaculum Mundi, München (GER)
If you are counting the number of gigs, Munich’s Total Vokal might be the biggest a cappella festival in the world. With small and medium locations (there are exceptions, e.g. maybebop will perform in the prestigious „Prinzregententheate“ this Yard), this
festival doesn’t present the top 10 international groups, but still has an amazing list
of extraordinary a cappella acts, who sang in Oktoberfest City.
www.spectaculum-mundi.de/index.php?vokal_total_programm

October 17-21, 2012
Festival Espoochor, Espoo (FIN)
Hosted by Finnish vocal group Club for Five (artistic directors), this event is in its tenth season and will attract international choirs and vocal ensembles.
www.festivals.fi/festivaalit/ooppera_ja_kuoro/88/?/eng

October 30 – November 4, 2012
Polyfollia Festival and Competition, Saint-Lo (FRA)
Choir festival, mostly classical and: Huge!
www.polyfollia.org

No future events/dates announced yet:

chor.com, Dortmund (GER)
www.chor.com

Vocal Jazz Summit, Mainz (GER)
www.vocal-jazz-summit.de

Vokalarm, Trondheim (NOR)
http://vokalarm.no

NORTH AMERICA

Jan 27-29, 2012 (SOON!)
Los Angeles A Cappella Festival (LAAF)
The Professional Showcase featuring Duwende, Pentatonix, and Hookslide alone is reason to attend this festival. As the CASA festivals now typically feature, there is also a scholastic competition which this year will feature U of Oregon’s On the Rocks, the UCLA Scattertones, Cal Poly Take it SLO, UCLA Bruin Harmony, UCLA Random Voices, and Calabasas High School Unstrumental. Also becoming more standard for the CASA festivals, there will be a collaborative recording, workshops with arranging wizard Tom Anderson, and a recording workshop with Diovoce’s Dave Sperandio. A noteworthy workshop is “Crafting Your Sound World,” which is taught by none other than Christopher Harrison from Sonos. Looks like some tickets are still available.
www.la-af.com

Feb 10-11, 2012
Amplify A Cappella Festival, Providence, RI
A festival sponsored and produced by Liquid 5th Productions? Gonna be good. At this recently-announced festival, taking place in Providence, Rhode Island, the Professional Showcase will feature Transit and Duwende. The website says the goal of the festival is to raise funds to “inject resources back into the a cappella community,” including the creation of an A Cappella Licensing Fund which will help groups pay for the licensing necessary to make their performances legal. Sounds like a great goal, and there will be workshops with many of the folks from Duwende, Transit, and Liquid 5th as well as the omnipresent Jonathan Minkoff. Tickets are still available.
www.amplifyacappella.com

Feb 10-11, 2012
NE-Voices High School A Cappella Festival, Wilmington, MA
The same weekend as Amplify A Cappella, and only a state away (Massachusetts), the relevant headlining groups at this festival include Redline (hosting the Friday night competition), Firedrill!, and Pitch Slapped. Originally designed for high school groups, the organizers have opened up many of the events to collegiate groups as well.
http://ne-voices.com

March, 23-25, 2012
Sing Strong, Reston, VA
This year’s festival, in Reston, Virginia, will donate 100% of the proceeds to charity including the Alzheimer’s Association and local choral programs. The schedule has not yet been announced (I will update when it has), but last year’s headliners included Street Corner Symphony, The Bobs, The Essentials, The Glue, West Side 5, and Blue Jupiter, so you know they aim for top talent. More as the information is released….
www.singstrong.org

April 13-15, 2012
Boston Sings A Cappella (BOSS)
This festival is essentially a collaboration of past festivals East Coast A Cappella Summit and Social Media in A Cappella (SMACC). Despite the Professional Showcase headliners Cadence, Traces, and Redline, the biggest news about this festival is that it will feature the first ever Contemporary A Cappella Recording Awards (CARA) live awards ceremony, hosted by Ball in the House, going so far as to have a red carpet! Should be fun and exciting. In other big news for me- I will be attending this festival.
www.bostonsings.com

April 13-15, 2012
Toronto Vocal Arts Festival (CAN)
2012 line-up features The Swingle Singers, The New York Voices and The Nylons.
http://torontovocalartsfestival.com/index.html

July 2012
VoCALnation, Washington D.C.
No information has been released yet, but I would suspect the festival will be hosted by Euphonism (or maybe Vox Pop). This is a festival geared primarily towards helping Contemporary A Cappella League (CAL) groups get started or get better, but is open to anyone. I attended last year’s festival in New York City, and will never be the same. As soon as more information is available, I will post it here.
www.vocal-nation.com

November 2012
SoJam A Cappella Festival, Durham, NC
www.sojam.net

Feb-May 2012
Harmony Sweepstakes Festival
Terrific and often-overlooked, this annual competition begins in February and runs through April with 8 regional competitions (New York, Boston, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles, Virginia, Olympia Washington, and San Francisco) and then a final competition in California on May 12, 2012 in San Rafael, California. Past winners or finalists have included some groups you may have heard of, including Groove For Thought, m-pact, Toxic Audio, Naturally 7, The Idea of North, The Coats, North Shore, and Overboard (to name a few). So, while these are strictly competitions without workshops or master classes, they should most certainly be on your radar.
Also, don’t forget the various ICCA and ICHSA competitions beginning soon and culminating with the Finals in NYC on April 27-28, 2012.
www.harmony-sweepstakes.com

‎

AFRICA

August 29 – September 01, 2012
Namibia International Vocal Festival, Windhoek (Namibia)
hosted by Vocal Motion Six, feat. Rajaton
www.facebook.com/pages/Namibia-Vocal-Festival/273174429407585?sk=wall

ASIA

Asian festivals will be added in the next update of this list.

AUSTRALIA

March 13-18, 2012
Get Vocal Melbourne A Cappella Festival
www.vocalaustralia.com

2013

EUROPE

May 17-20, 2013
Aarhus Vocal Festival (AAVF) (DEN)
Probably one of the best vocal music festivals in the world. Hosted by the world’s best „rhythmic choir“ Vocal Line (DEN) and Aarhus Conservatory patron Bobby McFerrin, the third edition of AAVF will certainly be an amazing event, that will bring together a cappella enthusiasts from all continents.
www.aavf.dk

June 5-9, 2013
Tampere Vocal Music Festival (FIN)
www.tamperemusicfestivals.fi/vocal/vocal2011/?lang=en

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And now it’s your turn: If you have something to add, let us know right away to make this list better and better. If you are an event organizer, you’re invited to write a Vocal Blog post of your own and tell our readers what makes your festival unique and why it should be on this list. Looking forward to your links, tipps and recommendations.

courtesy of Kristoffer Fynbo Thorning (Postyr Project), originally posted on www.postyrproject.com on January 19th

I would like to tell you about the LiveMusicStage (LMS) project.
We met the Finnish CEO of LMS: Antti, at last years Popkomm in Berlin by coincidence. Tine and I where browsing around and stumbled over the LMS stand, where we quickly got an insight of the possibilities to do an online concert. There are many different platforms to do live-streaming of concerts on the web, but LMS had a different angle than most I’d seen. First was the quality of the picture which was beautifully and then there was the professional TV-studio and the team that was filming the concerts. It looked really nice and the whole idea, that it was recorded without an audience and everything was live-streamed, really appealed to the tech-nerd inside of me.

There was some well integrated interaction possibilities for the viewer as well. At first I thought it was a little taggy with the small silhouette waving and clapping in the bottom of the screen and I was scared that the running facebook chat would become really annoying, but after I tried one of the concerts, I could see that it was these small things that made you feel as a small part of the setting and concert environment.You could compare it to an ordinary concert where each individual audience don’t have the possibility to interact directly with the performer, but as a group, the audience can really affect the concert, and be a big part of the atmosphere at the venue.
The same goes for LMS where you can enable the full screen mode and only see the performers or use the little avatar to show three different gestures It doesn’t feel like a real live concert and it doesn’t feel like a live-stream. It’s something in between, a new concert format that you can play around with and that really excites me. A new concert concept where we can test ourselves and our music in a new frame and with a new kind of audience.

After the meeting with Antti from LMS at Popkomm, I knew that we should do such a concert with Postyr Project and I started to figure out a way to bring the concept to Denmark. So far, all the LMS concerts has been filmed in Finland and I needed to find a way to keep our costs down and still be able to do the concert with the professional setup. Well, first of all we needed a camera team that could produce this kind of event and I got in contact with the Danish production center TV-Basic. It’s a small school for TV in our hometown Århus and they immediately jumped onboard the project. We looked at several venues for the two concerts and decided to ask Hummel Fashion that had just opened their new headquarters at the harbour of Århus. After getting in contact with CEO Søren Schriver and the owner Christian Stadil we agreed on using their “showroom” with a beautiful view of the harbour, to shoot the two concert at. They also encourage us to make the concerts free of charge and thereby increasing the publicity value and reaching out to a wider audience.

So together with Tine I gathered small video grettings from around the world and Andreas put them together into a small presentation video. I made a digital poster/flyer to pass around and hopefully we will have a videoblog from Antti from LMS who will tell something about the technology behind Live Music Stage.

So here we are, 10 days to the concerts and things are starting to fall into place. We have to bring the Finnish Antti from LiveMusicStage to Århus so he can supervise the concerts and make sure that the hardware and uploading is working properly. We have to work in a different way with our sound, since there will be no actual front speakers and the whole sound mix should be fitted for computer and TV speakers. We need to setup the stage, light and scenery so it will reflect our thoughts of a house concert and still make it possible for the cameras to catch the mood and emotions we would like to express. And we need to find a way to make TV-Basics equipment and signal work together with Antti and the LMS hardware.

All this set aside, we are all really excited about these two concerts and naturally a little anxious. What will this new venue feel and look like, can we bring some of the live-feeling to the other side of the screen and will our music and voices carry through the very different sound-setups people will use for seeing the concerts?
There’s only one way to find out: www.LiveMusicStage.com the 29th of January 2012.

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If you want to see another live showcase by Postyr on January 24th  at Europe’s leading culture expo, the Kulturbörse Freiburg (A Cappella Special with Musix and Harthmuth und die Hitmaschine), you actually have to go come to Freiburg, the capital of  the Black Forest. (Note: Line and Florian have scheduled a Vocal Jog!!)  Or see Postyr with the Bonner Jazzchor on January 25th in Köln/Cologne, Altes Pfandhaus.

by Florian Städtler & Clare Wheeler

We don’t think this picture needs any comment…

Love, Flo & Wheelie

(Note: Didn’t even ask Clare about including her in this greeting, well, maybe in an acatelepathic way…)

by Paul Smith, baritone with VOCES8

Mr Vocal Blog, in the lovely post-LACF haze of warm feelings, amazing a cappella and shared time with friends from around the world in our home town of London, talked about the a cappella community.  It’s a wonderful thing! The LACF brought home, literally, how very intimate our world can be – with friends from all over the globe sharing this love and passion for the same art.  The festival also brought home to me how extreme the parameters of the term ‘a cappella’ can be! Fork seems a world away from what we do in VOCES8, but I loved it all the same!!

After having this experience on my doorstep, we’re now turning to the other side of a cappella life – a life on the road. VOCES8 departs on Saturday for a 7 week tour across the USA, during which we’re spending one month driving from gig to gig, covering about 5,000 miles in our two massive 4×4’s.  It’s going to be quite an experience, and our journey takes us from Colorado up through the likes of New Mexico; the Dakotas (North and South); Iowa, Minnesota – at this time of year, we’ve been told to dress warm!

This opportunity is an amazing one, but it also brings home how much we miss those we leave at home.  Touring is a wonderful, brilliant way to share our music, meet new friends and spread the a cappella word, but it’s also tough on those who have loved ones and family that we won’t be with for such a long time.  I look forward with excitement, tinged with a touch of nervous anticipation and hopes for meeting new people who enrich our lives. I expect every other a cappella nut is nodding their head as they read this!

As we travel, we’ll be making little videos, so do try to keep up with the many weird and wonderful places that VOCES8 will be appearing.  We’re celebrating our fifth year as a professional group, so there will be a little party wherever we go (we hope!!).  If you live in the US, and you love a cappella, then try to find us somewhere on our big adventure….. It’s road trip time.
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Paul is the baritone in VOCES8 and leads their education programme, which  works with 25,000 young people every year, and with long term projects in the UK, USA and France.

‘A Choral Tapestry’ by VOCES8 will be released on Signum Records on 1st February 2012.
‘In the Beginning’, the 5 Year Anniversary EP by VOCES8, is on selected release now.

recorded by Vocal Blog on Tour aka Florian Städtler on Sat, Jan 14th at Kings Place, London

Three times is a tradition, they say. So after Aarhus Vocal Festival 2011 and SoJam 2011, Vocal Blog video greetings from international vocal music events are now becoming a tradition. I haven’t counted the nationalities, groups etc. But I think this series of virtual hellos gives you a pretty nice impression of the artists and audience attending London A Cappella Festival 2012. Have fun watching the videos and thanks for sharing. For those of you on Twitter: I added the Twitter names of the interviewees; the official festival hashtag is #LACF2012).

JEREMY SADLER (UK) – @thejesmeister

JONTE RAMSTEN & KASPER RAMSTRÖM (FIN)  – @forkacappella

ALEX GODFREE (UK) @voicefestival

THE BROWN DERBIES (USA) @brownderbies

TINE FRIS (DEN) – @tinefris

JEEVES MURPHY (USA) – @euphonismdc

OLIVER GRIFFITHS (UK) – @swinglesingers & AARON JENSEN (CAN) – @cadencetweet

HANS CASSA (NED) – @hanscassa

ANNA ASUNTA & MIA HAFREN (FIN) – @forkacappella

WILLY ETESON (UK) – @willyeteson

LORENZO SUBRIZI (ITA)

THE IKON ARTS SUPERGIRLS (UK) – @ikonarts & @londonacappella

MURRAY (NZL)

ROSS LYNDE (CAN) – @cadencetweet , AMANDA ALDAG & CHARLIE FRIDAY (USA) – @euphonismdc

DOLLY MAY (UK)

CARL BERGER (CAN) – @cadencetweet

DYLAN BELL (CAN) – @freeplay

CLAUDIA APPEL (NED)

BILL HARE (USA)

CHRISTINA KRULL (GER)

COSTA PERISTIANIS (UK) – @costaIKON

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Florian Städtler is founder Vocal Blog and Chairman of the European Voices Association. He can’t believe how quickly this blog has developed a following of wonderful, intelligent and nicely-smelling people. Thanks for sharing the greatest ideas and the latest aca-gossip with a growing number of vocal music enthusiasts. If you can’t get enough of this stuff and/or want to get in touch with almost 1000 a cappella buddies like Vocal Blog on Facebook. If you want to make us of Vocal Blog as a filter and aggregator of a cappella news, links, tipps and hilarious tweets, follow Vocal Blog on Twitter.

If you want to sell and/or buy stuff online, go to Acappellazone or write to florian@acappellazone.com. If you think there is a video of high quality of exceptional artistry, let us know so that we can post it on the Acappellazone YouTube channel.

If you like face-to-face communication (like 4-hour candle light dinners or after party allnighters), I agree: This is the best way to communicate. So let’s stay in touch via social media and meet in person when Vocal Blog goes on tour: See you in Stockholm!