Competitions, festivals, tours and 750 concerts

The next lists sum up the choir’s appearances at competitions and festivals. Morski Zvutsi took part in international competitions five times: Wilton (Middlesbrough), England – fourth place (15 July 1966); Gorizia, Italy – first place for polyphony (22 September 1972) and first place for folk music (24 September 1972) with the mixed choir; the May Choral Competition in Varna (1975); Cork, Ireland – first places in all three categories, for mixed, women’s and men’s choirs (29 April – 1 May 1976); and Cantonigròs, Spain – two first places (mixed and women’s choir) and second place for folk music (July 1985), with concerts also in Roda de Ter and in the cathedral of Sant Joan de les Abadesses.

The international festivals include Dresden (1966) and the chamber choir festival in Rostock (1981) in East Germany, the Sea Week in Gdańsk (1970), the Béla Bartók contemporary music festival in Debrecen (1972), the national festival of the newspaper l’Unità at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome (1972) and the Lucca Musical Summer (1975). At home the choir sang regularly at the Winter and March Music Days in Ruse, the Sofia Music Weeks, Varna Summer (from 1970 to 2005) and every International May Choral Festival – from the first in 1967, later turned into a competition, to the 28th in 2005, which opened with a celebration of 130 years since the birth of Dobri Hristov. Abroad followed Idar-Oberstein and Bad Kreuznach (1980), Music in the Morvan in France (1990, with concerts in Autun, Anost and Vézelay), Choralies ’92 in Vaison-la-Romaine and the festival of cantata and oratorio music in the Morvan (Autun, 1993).

In Bulgaria the choir took part in seven national festivals (1959, 1964, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984 and 1989), in the “New Bulgarian Music” and “Panorama of Bulgarian Choral Art” reviews in Sofia, in the Golden Diana festival in Yambol (1970 and 1980) and in music festivals in Plovdiv, Burgas, Shumen, Vidin and Tervel.

The list of concert tours abroad counts 28 journeys: from Hungary (Budapest and Lake Balaton, 1963), Odesa (1964), Romania (1965) and East Germany (1966), through England, the USSR, Poland and Italy, Ireland (1976, via London and Paris), East and West Germany, Greece and Czechoslovakia, to three tours of France in a row (1990, 1992, 1993), Spain (1993), Germany (1994 and 2004) and the two tours of the United States – California (February–March 1997) and Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina (October 2000).

Finally comes a year-by-year summary of concerts from 1957 to 2005: 750 concert appearances in all. The busiest years were 1993 (37 concerts), 1959 (36) and 1962 (32); in the last years the count was between 4 and 7 a year, except for 1997 and 2000 – the years of the American tours – with 21 and 22 concerts.