April 2022, Message from the President

Dear friends,

On 1 February 2022, we had our 1st IFCM Board Meeting for this year. At the meeting, a great unanimous decision was reached by the Board that we will launch a special sponsorship campaign, called “Creating Futures in Choral Music with IFCM on its 40th Anniversary”. The goal of this sponsorship campaign is to support 1000 young conductors, composers, singers, managers, and administrators in becoming members of the IFCM community in 2022.

The one reason for launching this campaign is to celebrate our 40th anniversary by making IFCM better known and accessible throughout the world. We also want to support our loyal members as they nurture and develop choral music, and choral life in general, in their countries and regions.

On the other hand, a review of our current membership indicates that the majority of IFCM’s members are professional choral musicians whose careers are well established. We do not have a lot of young, emerging choral professionals. We believe that the unfortunate detrimental impact of the pandemic aggravated this imbalance. In response to this, we want to open our Federation to more young choral professionals and enthusiasts worldwide, sharing the benefits of an IFCM membership with them and providing them with the opportunity to connect with choirs and choral organizations around the globe.

In this campaign, we invite successful business people to support young choral musicians (under 35) by paying their IFCM membership for two years. This is IFCM’s first attempt at bringing people from other fields, such as business and technology, to sponsor the promising young conductors, composers, singers, managers, and administrators in becoming a part of IFCM’s substantial international choral network as well as investing in the growth and sustainability of the Federation.

Now, we are open to all the applicants who want to be supported by this sponsorship campaign. 

Over the past four decades, IFCM has aimed to facilitate communication and exchange amongst choral musicians worldwide through our Federation’s various projects, for example, the IFCM Choral Composition Competition.

The 5th IFCM Choral Composition Competition was launched on the 1 May 2021 and the winners were officially announced in March 2022, after a Jury of 5 professional members took on the hard task of selecting the winners. This 5th edition has a completely new vision and prospect. After a long discussion regarding how to continue this competition, the Board of IFCM decided to form a forward-looking committee for its future. Two categories were established for the new version of the Choral Composition Competition – Mixed and World Choral Day.

We received 93 applications in total – 74 for the Mixed category and 19 for World Choral Day – with a nice representation of countries from all six continents. We also appreciate the dedicated work of the Jury members: Nana Forte (Slovenia), Onur Türkmen (Turkey), Miguel Astor (Venezuela), Andrea Ramsey (USA), and Ko Matsushita (Japan). 

I hope that all the campaigns and projects of IFCM resonate with everyone’s love for and desire to grow group singing throughout the world. Dear friends, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, the future young professionals need you, the choral community needs you, and IFCM also needs you. Let’s move forward together!

Let’s move as well together toward more peace. Personally, I have a strong aversion to war, no matter with what excuse, in which form. Military violence is hurting thousands of innocent people and families, as well as the whole world. IFCM always contributes to choral music and education worldwide, appealing for world peace. In such a difficult situation, IFCM is making efforts to support the musicians and to comfort people who are suffering from the pain of war.

The Committee of World Choral Day (WCD) is launching an action, setting a special theme of the WCD: “Sing for Peace, Choirs of the World”. Through this theme, we intend to collect various choral singing to pray for peace worldwide, as we believe that singing and love will eliminate hate.