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Today is:13 Sep, 2026 The selected date: 13 Sep, 2026 |
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Those who were not there can only regret it. But take my advice: mark 30 May 2027 in your calendar already, so that you do not miss the next edition.
As I had only recently undergone surgery, I had to take things slowly and resist the temptation to run around the city from one concert venue to another. Still, apart from singing with my own choir, Klaster, at Stacja Biblioteka — a beautifully revitalised former waiting room of the Ruda Chebzie railway station — I managed to listen to several ensembles.
My friends, who came to Night of Choirs with me, chose a different route through the festival. Thanks to them, I can also tell you about something I did not witness myself, but which sounds exactly like the kind of thing that makes this event so special.
During the performance of Bytomski Kolektyw Śpiewaczy, which took place in an ajnfart — a Silesian word for a gateway or passage leading into a courtyard — a sudden storm broke out. The singers and the audience all rushed into the gateway for shelter, and the rest of the concert continued there, in surprisingly good “gateway acoustics”, accompanied by streams of rain and bubbles forming on the surface of growing puddles. No concert hall can offer emotions like that ;)
I was also told, very much in real time, that the same storm — because it did not choose to appear over that one gateway only — thoroughly soaked the Otwarty Chór Społeczny, which had been singing in a nearby garden. Kamil Gojowy, who was running between different festival locations throughout the evening, later admitted that he was lucky to have a complete change of clothes in his car, because the downpour did not spare him either.
And yet, thanks to the rain, something unexpected and beautiful happened. Four ensembles which had travelled from far away, but whose audiences could not reach them because it was simply raining too heavily, were invited to one shared space. There, they had a chance to listen to one another, meet, and experience each other’s music. In everyday choral life this is, unfortunately, not as common as one might wish — and that is a great pity.
Among the people who came to Night of Choirs was Aleksandra Borowiecka from Olsztyn, known to the Polish choral community as Dyryagentka. I first spotted her in the crowd, and later we met again during the presentation of the Hungarian choir Csíkszerda. We also sang together during the workshop that the choir led for the audience.
Those who know Hungarian will know that csíkos means “striped”, and szerda means “Wednesday”. So one may conclude from the name itself that the choir meets on Wednesdays and that its dress code is wonderfully simple: any horizontally striped T-shirt will do. Navy and white, red and blue, beige and white, narrow stripes, wide stripes — anything goes.
They came to Ruda Śląska from Budapest with around forty singers, although rumour has it that the full choir is much larger. And why them? Because they are, in fact, the initiators of Night of Choirs, which first began in Budapest. The event was later brought to Ruda Śląska by Krzysztof Dudzik, who deserves many rounds of praise for that.
Csíkszerda presented a very interesting programme, warmly received by the audience. Afterwards, during the workshop, they shared with us the way they work on part of their repertoire.
And here I must make a bow to Zoltán Kodály.
From my many years of observing choirs, I have often had the impression that Hungarian choirs sing so well and with such clean intonation not because they possess some mysterious national “intonation gene”, but because they have grown out of a culture in which music education has been taken seriously.
Kodály believed that music was not a luxury reserved for the chosen few, but an important part of human development. He also believed that singing should be something common and accessible — present not only in music schools, but in ordinary education as well. For many years in Hungary, singing, solfège, choir practice, contact with instruments and live music were part of everyday school life.
The result? When one encounters a Hungarian choir, even an amateur one, one often has the feeling that these people do not merely perform music. They speak music from within.
Today we also know more and more about the fact that singing together is not only an aesthetic experience. It is also work with breath, memory, concentration, attention, emotions and relationships with other people. In other words, a choir may sound beautiful, but it may also support well-being and cognitive functions in a very tangible way. In Csíkszerda’s performance, this could both be heard and felt.
But let us return to Ruda Śląska.
From other people’s accounts I also know that Seeing Voices Choir made a strong impression. Led by Dr Anna Wojtas-Rduch, the ensemble brings together music, sign language and Deaf culture. It is an important and beautiful example of how a choir can be not only a community of singing voices, but also a space where hearing, Deaf and hard-of-hearing people can meet.
This is a kind of inclusion that does not remain an elegant phrase in a programme note. It changes the very way we think about participation in culture.
My heartfelt congratulations also go to what was probably the youngest choir, in terms of its history, among this year’s Night of Choirs guests: Chór u Pana Franza from Ruda Śląska. If I were to use a gardening metaphor, I would say that the seeds sown last October in difficult, post-industrial soil are slowly beginning to bear fruit.
As usual, the event ended at 10 p.m. in the Market Square, with a shared and moving performance of the Night of Choirs Song written by Kamil Gojowy.
And finally, a little bit of statistics: this year’s Night of Choirs brought together 22 ensembles from Budapest, Bytom, Cieszyn, Gierałtowice, Katowice, Karviná-Ráj, Lublin, Orzesze, Piekary Śląskie, Rzeszów, Ruda Śląska, Seleczeno in Kashubia, Tychy, Wojkowice and Zabrze.
Rain or no rain, that is quite a choir map.
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