In the next few days, Gozo´s Gaulitanus Choir will be off for its next foreign venture abroad. Indeed, on the 25th August the choir will be flying to Riga for a concert tour of Latvia. This follows the invitation of Riga's Blagovest Chamber Orthodox Choir, one of the top Latvian choirs which the Gaulitanus Choir hosted in Gozo during the last edition of Gaulitana: A Festival of Music. The full programme is being fully co-ordinated by Blagovest and the Sing Latvia organisation, while the concert tour is supported by the Project Support Grant, Malta Arts Fund - Arts Council Malta.
Notably, for this concert tour, the choir's repertoire will essentially consist of a mixture of Maltese secular and sacred music, including various compositions by the Gaulitanus Choir's founder-director Colin Attard, who will also be directing the choir in Latvia.
The Gozitan choir will open its artistic events with an afternoon concert at the wonderful National Botanic Garden of Latvia in Salaspils, just south-east of the Latvian capital. The concert is being held in collaboration with the Elpa choir. The second commitment will be in Kuldīga, indeed an early evening concert in St. Catherine Church. This event in this state-protected Evangelical Lutheran church, which is the oldest place of worship in this charming medieval west Latvian town, is being held in collaboration with the Rāte choir. The choir will end its commitments with a grand concert at Riga's iconic St Peter's Church in the very heart of the old town, in collaboration with the Association of Culture Institutions of Riga City Council. Very significantly, the Blagovest Chamber Orthodox Choir will be joining the Gozitan choir for the second half of the concert.
This umpteenth foray on foreign soil, which comes back to back with a very successful concert tour of Assisi and Rome in June, will add to the Gaulitanus Choir's impressive list of commitments abroad, it being the choir's 18th venture abroad.