Prof. Dr. Bogdan Đaković, conductor of the choir of the Cathedral Church of St. George from Novi Sad, addressing the audience last night in the Church of St. Nicholas, before the start of the concert as part of the second day of the Choir Festival "In Unity with a Singing Heart", said that he was extremely pleased to be back in Kotor after a long series of years, and on a great holiday (Vidovdan).
The audience had the opportunity to truly enjoy the Orthodox church music of the 20th and 21st centuries, which was confirmed by the long-lasting applause after each point of the rich repertoire of the choir, which continues the rich tradition of Serbian, Bačka and Novi Sad church-singing societies, and especially the Cathedral Choir (1939-1946).
The choir's repertoire includes works of Serbian, Russian and Bulgarian sacred music from the 19th and 20th centuries, or rather a large number of songs from the older tradition: Byzantine, Serbian medieval and later unison, as well as examples of Russian polyphonic music from the 17th and 18th centuries.
It pays special attention to contemporary Orthodox and Christian liturgical and concert sacred music, and last night it performed: Bogorodice devovo, Tropar St. Nicholas, O Lord, Vecheri tvojeja tajnija, Angel vopijaše, Objatija ocja, Hvalite Gospoda, Tropar St. John of Rila, Ne ridaj mene Mati, Tebe pojem, Tijelo Hristovo, Enite ton Kirion, Stradanje i Vasksenje…
Solo - soprano Đurđica Babić.
In the following text, we provide more details about the work of the choir, which, in addition to regular participation in services in the Church of St. George and with the blessing of His Eminence, Bishop of Bačka, Mr. Irinej, performs at various festivals and events significant for the spread of our Orthodox and national culture.
The choir sang at numerous services and at special concerts throughout the country, as well as in a number of our monasteries.
It represented the Serbian Orthodox Church fourteen times at the European Meetings of Christian Youth, which have been organized since 1993 in Munich, Paris (1994, 2003), Wrocław, Vienna, Milan, Warsaw, Barcelona, ​​Budapest, Hamburg, Lisbon and Taizé (1999, 2000, 2002) by monks from the Taizé Monastery (France). The tradition of eighteen Christmas concerts in Novi Sad (1998-2015) is particularly noteworthy. The choir has performed in Paris, Milan, Barcelona, ​​Norwich, Cormer, Widmond Abbey, Bergamo, Hamburg, Ljubljana, Lisbon, Thessaloniki, Stockholm, Zagreb, Aberville, Schwerin, Thessaloniki, Vienna, Vasa/Finland, Dortmund, Amsterdam, Bern, Trieste and other European cities. A significant international performance was in early October 2023 in Rome, Vatican City, where the choir participated in a solemn prayer meeting led by Pope Francis, accompanied by the highest world church officials. Last year, the choir was in Denmark, where, in addition to concerts in several cities, it also sang at the liturgy in the Serbian Church in Copenhagen. The choir is led by conductor prof. Dr. Bogdan Đaković, a Novi Sad musicologist and conductor, is today one of the most prominent researchers of Serbian sacred music, who, along with his tireless scientific work in this field, is equally successful in performing, as the founder and artistic director of some of our leading choirs, including the “St. George” Choir, with whom he has made numerous, extremely notable concert appearances.
In his musicological work, Dr. Bogdan Đaković devotes special attention to the development of Serbian sacred music during the first half of the twentieth century.
He began his conducting career in 1987 by founding the church singing society “St. Stefan Dečanski” in Novi Sad. With the choir "St. George", which has been the main choir of the Cathedral Church in Novi Sad since 1992, he performs in the country and throughout Europe, and has also released four audio and one video disc. He has also performed with the Chamber Choir of the Academy of Arts and the choir of the Kotor-Art festival (Montenegro). He regularly participates in international meetings of Christian youth TAIZE (since 1994) and in the work of the European choral association Europa Cantat. As a guest conductor of the ensemble Kapela Romana (Portland, USA), he performed Serbian sacred music at concerts held in Seattle and Portland in 2014. He was a member of the Regional Artistic Committee of the Europa Cantat festival in 2015 in Pécs. He is a member of the International Association for Orthodox Music (ISCOM, Finland).
The program was hosted by Dušan Davidović.
Today on the program:
On St. Luke's Square on Sunday (June 29) at 9:30 pm, the Kotor klapa "Incanto" and the Church Children's and Youth Choir and Orchestra will perform at the closing of the festival "Orlić" from Batajnica.
The organizers of the Choir Festival "In Unity with a Singing Heart" are SPD "Jedinstvo" (1839) Kotor and the Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality of Kotor, with the support of the Municipality of Kotor and the School for Primary and Secondary Music Education "Vida Matjan" Kotor.