The Ephemeral Choir
Singing to the Gods
From there we will depart to the eclectic and colorful city of La Paz, renowned for its cultural wealth, for its colors, its churches and the aromas and sounds of its backstreets. With our repertoire building, we will conduct our first Ephemeral Choir recital at Titicaca Lake, a mystical place where the great Inca empire was born.
The Ephemeral Choir: Singing to the Gods - is a profound immersion in singing and culture. Over 2 weeks, this traveling festival will access the music of the Amazonian Indians and the Inca Culture still practised in the Sacred Valley of Cusco and Machu Picchu. Recitals in places of extraordinary beauty and cultural importance are the zenith of this extraordinary journey.
The recitals will reflect the choral work undertaken in rehearsal with some of the worlds' finest choir directors. Already we have three directors signed up and to these maestros we will add local musicians, singers and dancers. The Singing to the Gods project is the second in The Ephemeral Choir Series, following on from the inaugural 2019 Ephemeral Choir in the Blue Mountains, Australia, where our choral work was resolved with a stunning performance in the 380 million year old Cathedral Cave.
Professor Santiago Lusardi Girelli will lead the festival, drawing on his deep, first hand experience of South America and its people. The other directors will be announced at a later date, however all directors and musicians will be at the very top of their professional lives, with a diversity of conducting styles and philosophies, making Singing to the Gods a musical tour de force.
The journey begins in the jungles of the Amazon of Chiquitos, touring ancient villages and exploring the musical culture of the original peoples. In this wonderful place we will integrate singing with an exploration of the Amazon.
After that we ascend to the magnificent imperial city of Cuzco where we will sing in ancestral indigenous temples and imposing colonial churches, in the city’s cobbled streets, with local people and in the towns vibrant markets. We will become embedded in local musical experiences where singing is designed to venerate the beauty of Nature. It is from here in Cusco that we stage some extraordinary recitals, singing in Inca religious places such as the magical city of Machu Picchu. The ancient annals say that the citadel of Machu Pichu is one of the most powerful energy vortexes on earth, and that the Inca songs in Quechua language awaken the sleeping snake and revive the energy that emerges from the monolith “Intihuatana” - a place where the sun god was tied. That is where the Inca mystical heritage, the eternal Inca song, and its spirituality based on the love of nature, are combined.
Here in the Sacred Valley of the Incas the choir and personal journeys will be resolved, as you sing to the Gods, reflecting that great human impulse to aspire to the universal, and a personal pilgrimage to be part of a deep and magnificent ritual.
Like a piece of ephemeral performance art the recitals will exist just for a moment, but resonate for the rest of your life.
At the end you will be able to say, I sang at Lake Titicaca, I sang in the Amazon, I sang in concert in Cusco and I sang at Machu Picchu.
