EVS in Estonia

After having been elected European Capital of Culture in 2004, the city of Lille, located in the northern part of France, offer this year festivities until the 12th of July 2009 around the theme of Europe XXL (a wide vision of Europe from Berlin to Kazakhstan passing by Baltic Countries and Turkey). From March to July, four months of different kind of cultural events linked to this theme are taking place overthere : exhibitions, concerts, dance, shows, theatre, movies, conferences, etc…

Saturday 14th of March, was the opening parade and we were there ! For this occasion, a project called “A thousand voices” proposed to Lille’s inhabitants to sing songs from different european countries, especially from western Europe. We listened to one very nice concert from a french choir about traditional estonian songs written by the famous composer Veljo Tormis. It was a success, the room was full, and the estonian music sounded particularly well in this closed place with a good accoustic. We really appreciated the effort of the different members of the choir to sing in estonian and we could hear that they were doing their best for the prononciation of the words, and for the adaptation to estonian rythms and sonorities really differents from our traditional french songs.

We are really more than happy that one event like this help promoting european countries almost unknown like Estonia in France. We are now waiting for the midday-midday event around Baltic Countries from the 10th to the 12th of April 2009, still in Lille of course !