MEET THE SINGERS
of the World Youth Choir 2019
The international jury meeting was hosted at the Drac Occitanie building in Toulouse, France, between the 11th and 14th of March. The jury members, representative of the three patron organisations (IFCM, ECA-EC and JMI), together with the conductor of the session, selected the best singers from 250 candidates. After many hours of listening to the numerous recordings and evaluating the applicants, the international jury finally chose 56 singers from 27 countries to be part of the World Youth Choir 2019 summer session in France and Portugal.
The selection was made taking into account the artistic and musical quality of each candidate through all the audition files submitted: voice range, sight reading abilities, vocal technical skills, ability to prepare a piece and voice performance throughout. The jury also took into consideration the complementarity of the voices of the singers selected, in order to create a cohesive group (in each section and for the whole choir) and, whenever possible, amplifying the diversity of countries represented in the World Youth Choir.
The choice was often tricky for the jury and the selected singers have now a heavy responsibility being part of the 2019 session. Many others could be also part of the choir and not being selected does not diminish their skills. The jury members invite all of them to continue vocal training to improve their musical abilities and performance and - for those who have not reached the age limit - to audition again next year.
SELECTED SINGERS
Soprano section
First Soprano:
Anna Campmany Duch, Spain
Chloe Kiely, Ireland
Felicitas Ammer, Germany
Hannah Martin, USA
Mayuko Tsushida, Japan
On Ying Angela Yiu, Hong Kong/China
Second Soprano:
Angéla Mészáros, Hungary
Carly Wingfield, USA
Cecile Kretz, France
Eilis Dexter, Ireland
Giulia Faria, Brazil
Lucía Muniagurria, Argentina
Maria Fernanda Gonzalez, Peru
Zala Strmole, Slovenia
Section Leader:
Patricia Flury, Switzerland
Alto section
First Alto:
Aniangi Vieira, Venezuela
Elyse Delaney, Canada
Greta Andersberg, Sweden
Siri Bengtsson Marklund, Sweden
Stephanie Piatek, Germany
Sterre Decru, Belgium
Second Alto:
Ana Arán Parra, Spain
Daan van der Schaft, The Netherlands
Eleriin Müüripeal, Estonia
Florgyneth Pérez, Venezuela*
Hongling Ma, Taiwan
Nele Erastus, Estonia
Nicole Franco Ralón, Guatemala
Yumi Sasaki, Japan
Section Leader:
Shannon Elizabeth Romba, USA
Tenor section
First Tenor:
Benjamin Done, Canada
Ciaran Fennelly, Ireland
David Medrano, Brazil
Emanuele Petracco, Italy
Kevin Hernández, Mexico
Raimer Gil, Venezuela
Robert Pirk, Estonia
Second Tenor:
Aljaž Bastič, Slovenia
Felipe Da Paz Soares, Brazil
Francisco Santos, Portugal
Jacob Luellen, USA
Korbinian Krol, Germany
Lukas Gunawan Arga Rakasiwi, Indonesia
Section leader:
Gert Pottas, South Africa
Bass section
Baritone:
Ardak Bukharbekov, Kazakhstan
Bryan Chong, Malaysia
Elias Aaron Johansson, Sweden
Frederic Schikora Tamarit, Spain Guilherme de Almeida, Brazil/Portugal
Hugo Gjelsvik Herman, Norway
Thomas Vandenabeele, Belgium
Bass:
Alberto Palacín Fernández, Spain
Brian Dungan, Ireland
Graeme Climie, Canada
Hao-Chun Hsu, Taiwan
João Martins, Portugal
Michael Gernert, Germany
Roy Aboagye Djan, Ghana*
Troy Robertson, USA
Section Leader:
Guilherme Roberto, Brazil
All the singers have been contacted and the selected singers will take part in the session pending submission of their signed confirmation of attendance. The short-listed reserve singers will be contacted in case any of the selected singers is unable to take part in the World Youth Choir 2019 programme or fails to confirm their attendance.
* Post-session note: Both Florgyneth Perez Duc (Venezuela) and Roy Aboagye Djan (Ghana) were set to participate but, due to unforeseen reasons independent to the organisation, were not able to take part in the session.
FINAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The World Youth Choir would like to acknowledge all our partners, recruiters, alumni and audition supervisors that helped audition over 250 singers for this year’s edition of the programme. The recruitment process could not have been carried out without their invaluable help and for this we would like to publicly thank them.
We also thank the World Youth Choir jury and conductor for carrying out the hard task of listening to all the audition files and performing a fair and balanced selection of talented singers which will integrate the choir this year.