Hội An 2011 - Program Book

15
Dear friends,
as the president of INTERKULTUR I would
like to bid you a most cordial welcome to
the 1 st Vietnam International Choir Festival
& Competition 2011 in Hoi An City. This
festival is a milestone for INTERKULTUR,
because we succeeded for the first time in
establishing one of our events, which are
worldwide in great demand, in the dynamic
and gorgeous Vietnam. We are very proud
of this first Vietnamese competition and we
hope that it will develop in a positive way.
My sincere thanks go to all who made this
event possible.
Hoi An can be translated as “peaceful meeting
place” and is one of the top touristic destinations
Vietnam has to offer. And if you
walk around the city you can feel that this is
going to be the ideal meeting place for local
and international choirs coming together to
celebrate peaceful competitions.
We are especially happy that 35 choirs from
South East Asia have applied for this first
Vietnamese INTERKULTUR event. Thus we
can cordially welcome choirs from Indonesia,
the Philippines, Malaysia, China, Sri Lanka
and Singapore. Even a choir from Estonia
set off to Vietnam in order to participate in
the festival. And we are pleased that also
choirs from Vietnam, a country that begins
right now to approach the choral world also
internationally, will participate in our event.
Currently INTERKULTUR is intensively preparing
the 7 th World Choir Games which
are taking place in July 2012. We are happy
that hundreds of choirs from all nations
will meet in Cincinnati (Ohio – USA) for the
world’s largest choir competition following
the motto “Singing together brings nations
together” and immersing in an indescribable
festival atmosphere. And of course we
also cordially invite the choirs from South
East Asia to join this event.
But our strategies reach even further into
the future. They intend to offer the choral
community worldwide even in the second
decade of the new millennium new and interesting
INTERKULTUR festivals at outstanding
venues.
I wish all participants a lot of success and
great experiences when celebrating and
performing in the streets, at squares and on
stages in the beautiful Hoi An City in Vietnam.