Forty years, an honorary citizen and the first US tour (1996–1997)

1996 was a landmark year both for the choir and for Marin Chonev: it marked 40 years since the choir was founded. Preparations for the anniversary did not get in the way of a concert on 20 April in Varna Cathedral for the 120th anniversary of the April Uprising, or of the choir’s part in the opening of Varna Summer ’96. On 7 May the newspaper Narodno Delo (in an article by Lyudmila Panteleeva) reported that the opera singer Gena Dimitrova, the violinist Mincho Minchev and Prof. Marin Chonev had been proposed as honorary citizens of Varna on the 70th anniversary of the Varna Summer festival. By a decision of 22 May 1996 the City Council made them Honorary Citizens of Varna – an honour not only for the conductor but also for the choir with which he had travelled the road to it.

The concert “40 Years of Morski Zvutsi” took place on 22 June at the Art Gallery, followed by congratulations, flowers and a reception in the choir’s hall, where many former singers also gathered. On 7 July the choir sang at Varna Summer ’96 in the full hall of the Festival and Congress Centre. Attention then turned to the repertoire for a tour of the United States; in the meantime the choir gave a lecture-concert for choral conducting students at the Dr P. Beron teachers’ institute, and on 22 February 1997 a farewell concert, “Bon voyage”, with the tour programme.

On 26 February 1997 the choir was already singing in Paso Robles, California, and daily concerts with long journeys followed: Modesto, Lafayette, Palo Alto, Fresno, Point Loma college in San Diego, St Paul’s Cathedral during the convention of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), Temecula, Murrieta, Carlsbad, Thousand Oaks, Anaheim, two concerts in Redlands – at the university and at Trinity Episcopal Church – and on 14 March the last concert at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach. The hardships paled beside the pride of having worthily represented the choir and little Bulgaria, unknown in many parts of America. Maestro Chonev, who had been fully involved in preparing the choir, was unable to travel through an unfortunate turn of events and handed his conducting duties to his son Kalin Chonev, then studying in California. All the concerts were conducted by Rositsa Shtereva and Kalin Chonev.

The author quotes extracts from the many letters to Chonev. Dr Thomas E. Miller, conductor of the Master Arte Chorale, wrote that the concert let them hear the beauty of the liturgy, “sung authentically and with feeling”, and that Shtereva and his son had done remarkable work. The conductor Dr Patricia Hennings of the Peninsula Women’s Chorus in Palo Alto passed on her singers’ impressions of a “completely balanced” sound, and its coordinator Kathleen Kelsick hoped the two choirs would one day sing together in Bulgaria. The pianist Johnny Wade, who accompanied the concert of 10 March in Thousand Oaks, said he had felt “the presence of the Holy Spirit” in the performance, and James A. Shepper praised the intonation, diction and precision.