"Let Freedom Ring!", – sang more than 300 gospel singers in one powerful voice on one stage during concerts of the Vilnius Gospel Music Festival in Vilnius, Lithuania on October 2-4, 2015.
This traditional gospel music festival has already become like a Gospel song holiday which gathers choirs and solo singers from all over Lithuania and abroad. It was for the 13th time YWCA-YMCA Lithuania organized such an event thus contributing to the development and promotion of the choir culture Lithuania. This year the festival presented two Swedish gospel music stars – Monica Tornqvist and Malcolm Chambers – who gave training in gospel signing as well as performed together with the mass choir at the gospel concert in the newly built concert hall of Vilnius and a special gospel service in St. John’s Church. Let Freedom Ring! was a theme of this year’s festival. Powerful voices, magic of rhythm and a great doze of energy made the audience applaud standing and then join in clapping to a special gospel beat.
Vilnius Gospel Festival is open to anyone who wants to learn, sing and experience gospel music. Singing in a choir is like team sports in music where each team member needs to listen to each other to achieve good results. It is the choir music that unites its singers and shows that each of them is irreplaceable and creates overall harmony and music power. Music is a common language that helps us to understand each other. And as guest singer Malcolm Chambers mentioned, being a young boy did not fully understand what the priest was preaching at a church service but once the gospel choir began to sing he realized the main message! Gospel music is an instrument which helps to receive the good message of Christ.
YWCA-YMCA Lithuania has introduced this music genre to Lithuania and has been organizing gospel music festivals and trainings since 2001. Each time Vilnius Gospel Music Festival brings choirs, music groups, soloists and choir conductors together all around Lithuania and other places including Sweden, USA, Poland, Latvia and other countries. The organizers of the festival have already started planning special training type event next year and a celebratory 15th anniversary event in 2017.
Enjoy a few moments of the joint gospel choir performance during the church service in St. John’s church in Vilnius on October 4th
Photo credit: M. Kundrotas
Learn more about the festival at www.vilniusgospel.lt