Slovenia's renowned choir, Carmina Slovenica, introduces "vocal theatre"
Carmina Slovenica, a female youth choir from the Slovenian town of Maribor is one of the most internationally renowned vocal ensembles. It creates contemporary music projects and has introduced a new concept - the vocal theatre, which incorporates music, drama, movement and other stage elements.
The Choir has performed on stages worldwide in Europe, the USA, Canada, Africa, Central and South America and Japan and continues to perform abroad. The choir and its leader Karmina Silec strive to find new music and new fields of work and the result is a wide repertoire: from early music, ethnical vocal music to the latest avant-garde. Carmina Slovenica has received many awards at international choral competitions. Currently they are touring Spain starting in the north in Aviles, continuing in the Convent of Las Huelgas, where they perform Sacred Spanish Music written by nuns at the convent.
In 2002 Carmina Slovenica presented the project Musica Inaudita, which encompassed works by women composers from the 9th to the 17th centuries including works composed by the nuns of the Monastery Las Huelgas. So performing in the convent where the music was actually written is something very special as Karmina Silec the conductor of the choir explains:
"For years I wanted my singers to go to the famous convent Las Huelgas in Burgus, as they feel very strongly about the project and this music. The monastery has a big collection of sacred Medieval polyphony, which means that the singers have to prepare themselves very hard for these songs as the music notes are of a different kind and so is the temperament of the music. So I feel happy that the girls can explore the place where the music was actually written and performed and it was performed with a similar ensemble, which means an ensemble of 40 girls."
With the tour in Spain this year's season of concerts abroad ends after performances in Prague, in Dresden at the Dresdener Musikfestspiele, several concerts in Sweden and now Spain.
