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Founded as the first professional choir in Gyeonggi-do on February 1, 1983, the Suwon Municipal Choir (English name: Suwon City Chorale; Chinese name: 水原市立合唱團) held its foundation concert at the Suwon Civic Center on June 18 of the same year. It started with a total of 61 members, including 19 sopranos, 17 altos, 11 tenors, and 14 basses as founding members.
The Suwon Municipal Choir created a fresh sensation in the Korean choral world by striving to discover a variety of new repertoires, such as developing Korean creative choral songs through regular and planned concerts in the early days of its foundation, as well as giving domestic premieres of works by famous foreign composers that had not been introduced in Korea. Through active performance activities such as national tours, radio and TV broadcasts, and invitations to national events such as the 1986 Seoul Asian Games and 1988 Seoul Olympics, the choir has grown into a top choir in Korea both in name and reality.
Since then, the Suwon Municipal Choir has expanded its stage to the world. Australia in August 1996 Participated in the 4th World Symposium on Choral Music held in Sydney as one of 25 invited choirs selected from 70 member countries around the world, following the choirs in Taipei, Israel and France, receiving a standing ovation from the entire audience . In June 1997, the world-renowned master Helmuth Rilling performed as a choir. Suwon Municipal Choir was invited exclusively as a choir in charge of performing at the Oregon Bach Festival in the USA, which boasts tradition and reputation led by Suwon Municipal Choir. "Harmony was a beautiful sound that touched my heart. It was well organized to the extent that there were no dark flaws in the sound, and it was a beautiful sound that captivated the soul with perfect ensemble and blending, and sophisticated and refined harmony." In the first European tour in August 2003, the Association of British Choral Directors performed at the Birmingham Symphony Hall, Austria . Vienna Augustinian Church Invitational performance and Czech Republic After successfully completing Mozart's Requiem collaboration with the Prague Symphonietta Orchestra, all the audience members who attended the concert cheered as well as the choir conductors, saying, "That sound is the true choral sound" and "We rather than us." In the second European tour in August 2008, the second invitational performance by the British Choral Directors Association and England, Romania, Hungary, and France were performed. Successfully performed in the back country, Sir. David Willcocks, Bob Chilcott, John Rutter, Eric Whitacre, and other world-class musicians who attended the concert received the highest praise, saying, 'The world's best choir and the best choral music'.
Through these activities, the Suwon Municipal Choir imprinted its name on the world stage and played a role as a cultural ambassador to inform the international community of Korean choral music. In August 2011, the Suwon Municipal Choir held a concert in Africa, a barren land of music, to give back through music the great love received through active performance activities at home and abroad. He delivered high-quality Korean choral music to students from the African Institute of Music, who were dreaming of new hope through music in Uganda, and gave a heart-warming performance.
In 2013, the 30th anniversary of its founding, ' U.S. At each performance , such as ‘Exclusive Concert at Lincoln Center (Alice Tully Hall) in New York ’, ‘Concert to Commemorate the 60th Anniversary of Amity between Korea and the USA’, and ‘Invitational Concert at Yale University ’, the group is on the world stage, drawing a moving record of a full house and standing ovations. It fully demonstrated the potential of its 30-year history and successfully completed the '30th Anniversary Concert' in Suwon and Seoul, in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of its founding, in which commissioned pieces such as 'Suwon Fantasia' and 'Carmina Burana' were performed. The '2013 Suwon Choir Festival', which was held for 16 days under the slogan 'Singing Suwon with the Harmony of Friendship', was evaluated as 'successfully expanding the base of choral music' and was reborn as a regular choral festival, becoming the '2017 Suwon Choir Festival'. ' led to the successful hosting of the event.
The Suwon Municipal Choir has successfully performed works representing each era from the Renaissance to the present and received a lot of praise. is loved by many music lovers. In addition, opera works (G.C. Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, W.A. Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, G. Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, Die lustige Witwe, La Bohème), which have been self-produced every other year since 2010 and have received public expectations and attention, are expected to popularize the opera genre and attract audiences. It contributed to the expansion of the base and caused a fresh wave.
Based on the history and tradition, the Suwon City Choir, which has led the Korean choral music industry and has always opened a new chapter of Korean chorus music, has been opening a new chapter of Korean chorus music. He has achieved great musical growth with the big masters of the Korean choral music world, including the conductor, the 4th Park Ji -hoon, and the 5th James Kim conductor.
In the 40th anniversary of the founding in 2023, he presented two planning concerts in June and December with musical music director Park Calin. In May, since the start of the busking performance under the theme of Park Busking 'Music Blossom', it has been successfully settled and continues to create a new busking program.
In January 2025, Bomi Kim took office as the 6th Artistic Director and is working hard to make a new leap of the choir. |
