It’s with great sadness that we announce to our audience that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the World Youth Choir 2020 session held together with the Bundesjugendorchester cannot take place this year.

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Following a German government order to cancel all major events held before August 31st, and with similar regulations in other European countries, all our concerts were cancelled by the individual venues/ festivals. Furthermore, neither the WYC Foundation nor the organisers (BJO) feel like it’s possible to guarantee the safety of all participants of the project (choir, soloists, orchestra, team etc.) during the 3-week session and tour. We believe this is the only socially responsible path for us to take, in order to not spread the virus even further.

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We are still immensely proud of our singers selected to participate in this project, thus we have decided to still upload all their presentations and pictures over the next few days on our Facebook page, even if the project is not taking place. We cannot express how deeply we regret this unfortunate situation and how very saddened we are to unwillingly be taking this fantastic opportunity away from everyone selected to participate in it.

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Finally, there were a lot of great actors coming together and working in the background for the last 12 months in this project: Tan Dun, Jörn Andresen, the soloists, the German Youth Orchestra staff, the European Choral Association - Europa Cantat staff, the Board and team of the World Youth Choir Foundation and, last but not least, good old Beethoven. It was a big task to organize this rehearsal session and summer tour with two large size ensembles and eleven(!) concerts in four countries, so we would like to thank everyone who was involved in the planning, especially the BJO tour managers Elena Hestermann and Annika Meier and WYC manager Inês Moreira.

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We also want to thank the German Youth Orchestra director Sönke Lentz for his dedication to this project and fantastic collaboration, and to Sonja Greiner (from ECA-EC and the WYC Foundation board) for being the initial idea and the connection between the BJO and the WYC.

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With the hope of being able to bring excellent young singers together again soon, connecting the world in song,