The workshop, help for blind children and a statute for the choir (2005–2006)

Straight after the May competition the choir joined the “Working Studio” of the Seventh International Conductors’ Workshop. The programme featured Mozart’s Requiem and Bach’s Cantata No. 150 (“Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich”), and the lecturers were Prof. Marin Chonev (Bulgaria) and Prof. Larry Wyatt (USA). The soloists were Larain Renfroe (soprano), Marilyn Very (mezzo-soprano), Robert Bean (tenor) and Douglas Renfroe (bass). Morski Zvutsi was joined by guest singers from the United States – from Central Baptist College in Conway, Arkansas, Edison Community College in Fort Myers, Florida, Alfred University in Alfred, New York, and St Martin’s Episcopal Church in Columbia, South Carolina. The Sinfonietta orchestra accompanied, and this year’s conductors were Luann Crosby, Lisa Lantz, Lani McManus, Douglas Renfroe, Marion Smith and Raymond Sprague. The final concert took place in Varna on 7 June 2005.

The last performance of the season came on 21 June 2005 at the Varna Summer International Music Festival, marking 130 years since the birth of Dobri Hristov, the founder of Bulgarian choral music. The concert in the Art Gallery brought together all the ensembles of the Morski Zvutsi Choral School and students of the Dobri Hristov National School of Arts. After a break until 1 September, the choir began preparing its jubilee concert for the 50th anniversary in 2006. Its programme had fourteen pieces – from the Dies irae and Lacrimosa of Mozart’s Requiem, Taneyev’s “Look, what a mist”, Rok Golob’s “Alleluia” and Rachmaninoff’s “Bogoroditse Devo” from the All-Night Vigil to Dobri Hristov’s “Our Father”, G. Dimitrov’s “The snowdrop has bloomed”, P. Hadzhiev’s “Over sleepy Lyulin”, M. Kolarov’s “My homeland is in my heart”, “Hubava si, tatkovino”, a Latvian sailors’ song and Dawson’s spiritual “Soon Ah Will Be Done”.

The September 2004 visit to Germany also had a charitable side. With its concert in Kirn the choir joined a German Lions Club initiative to raise money for Varna’s Prof. Dr Ivan Shishmanov school for visually impaired children, which was planning a sports complex with a multi-purpose hall, a swimming pool, a chess club and a gym. In Kirn, about 40 km from Idar-Oberstein, the Varna singers performed the Mass in F major by Theo Fürst, who by then had retired on grounds of age as conductor of the Grubscher choir. With tickets at 10 euros, the concert drew a full house and was recorded on CD, and the proceeds – some 6,000–8,000 euros – were earmarked for the school; the rest of the help, for an outside lift, came from donations at the choir’s other two concerts, which were free. So wrote Bogomil Yovchev in the newspaper “167 ch. – Varna” (issue 5, 1–7 February 2005). In September 2005 a three-member delegation from the Grubscher choir, including Theo Fürst, came to Varna to hand over the money in person, and the Morski Zvutsi board was glad that its personal connections abroad had helped the children of the school in the Asparuhovo district.

The question of the 50th anniversary also stirred the municipality’s Culture and Spiritual Development Directorate, where the view prevailed that the choir’s registration no longer suited the times. The city councillors adopted a statute for the newly formed Morski Zvutsi Choral School, comprising the Representative Choir, the Boys’ and Youth Choir and the Girls’ Choir (led by Zaharina Milkova-Nikitasova). The school reports to the director of the directorate and is funded from the municipal budget; its staff – a chief conductor, two conductors, a pianist and an accompanist – are part of the directorate’s establishment, and it is housed in a municipal building at 7 Musala Square. Its activities and relations with other organisations are to be governed by special rules. And so, fifty years after its founding, the Morski Zvutsi choir finally had an approved statute.