Choirs rule in Weißkirchen

Saturday, 9th May, 2015 saw the annual spring festival of the choral society “Germania 1873” in Weißkirchen take place with a new idea: in the sports hall of the TV Weißkirchen the stage had been decorated with flowers, but the singers were not standing on it. Instead they were standing on the floor, directly in front of the audience.

One after another the choirs that belong to the society showed off their talent. The youth choirs Zaunkönige and SoundUp! started things off, conducted by Eike O. Müller. Their first song brought the visitors into the hall, before 10-year-old Emma performed a solo on the flute and later sang as well in “My Heart Will Go On”.

They were followed by the male choir “Männersache”, conducted by Peer-Martin Sturm. They sang about Spanish nights, and gave a taste of their current project: a Beatles medley, the first part of which being “Can’t Buy Me Love” which they performed.

It was a tight squeeze on the “stage” when the time came for the jazz, rock and pop group “Tontauben” to sing. Conducted by Mark Opeskin, the group began by snapping their fingers and clapping to create “rain in the park”, bevor moving on to pieces such as “Blue Skies”, “I’ll by there” from the Jackson Five and “Saturday in the Park”. Meanwhile the hall had filled up, and the audience paid particular attention to Katrin Weber who sang a long solo piece during the traditional Latvian song “Ligo”.

It was at this point that their spokesman, Stefan Hofmann, told the audience that the group is urgently looking for male singers to join them, because even though the group is so large, there are very few men in it. In fact, he joked, that should actually be an incentive for single men to join the choir.

After a longer break, in which the audience were able to partake of coffee, cake, sausages and steaks, it was time for the children’s choirs “Rotkelchen” and “Nachtigallen” to sing, and they were also conducted by Eike O. Müller. With songes such as “Das muß ein Ritter können” and the “Lied über mich” they left a cute impression on the audience. They gave everything they had to sing “Kids regieren die Welt” (Children rule the World) – a song inspired by Roger Cicero and re-written by Eike O. Müller himself.

The female choir after them started with a Mexican piece, and some of the younger members of the audience were amazed to see how strong the ladies were in their performance. And finally, the mixed choir closed the concert.

Whether the new idea of having the “stage” on one level with the audience is repeated next year depends very much on the feedback that the societies chairwoman Julia Zinser-Hofmann receives. With the larger groups and smaller singers it was not always easy to get everyone on one photograph without having heads in the way.

This article appeared in German in the Oberurseler Woche on Wednesday, 13th May, 2015.