Northern Echoes Youth Choir Kamer

• Eric Whitacre (b. 1970): Lux Nova:
• 1Whitacre: Lux Nova04:23
• Jānis Ivanovs (1906 - 1983): Rudens Dziesma:
• 2Ivanovs: Rudens Dziesma03:25
• Knut Nystedt (1915 - 2014): Immortal Bach:
• 3Nystedt: Immortal Bach04:40
• Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946): Actus Caritatis:
• 4Vasks: Actus Caritatis05:42
• Eriks Ešenvalds (b.1977): O Salutaris Hostia:
• 5Ešenvalds: O Salutaris Hostia03:36
• Ola Gjeilo (b. 1978): Northern Lights:
• 6Gjeilo: Northern Lights04:53
• Total Runtime26:39

Info for Northern Echoes

Kamēr... is a Latvian mixed youth choir based in Riga, Latvia, founded in 1990 by Māris Sirmais. A winner of multiple national and international prizes and awards. Kamēr... became the first and currently the only choir in the world having won the European Grand Prix for Choral Singing three times (2004, 2013, and 2019). The choir performs in various events both in Latvia and worldwide, and collaborates with renowned composers, musicians and orchestras.

Since June 2022, the artistic director and chief conductor of the choir is Jurģis Cābulis. The second conductor of Kamēr... is Patriks Kārlis Stepe. The former artistic directors are its founder Māris Sirmais (1990-2012), Jānis Liepiņš (2012-2018) and Aivis Greters (2018-2022).

The choir has two vocal coaches: Ansis Sauka, who works with the choir since its founding in 1990, and Jolanta Strikaite-Lapiņa, who joined our choir family in 2016, after the retirement of Aina Bajāre. Ansis works mostly with the male voices, and Jolanta with the female voices.

Over the years, Kamēr... has produced programs specially commissioned for the choir. Its biggest project to date is World Sun Songs (2008), which featured 17 new choral works inspired by the sun; the project included such world-renowned composers as Sir John Tavener, Giya Kancheli, Sven-David Sandström, Leonid Desyatnikov, John Luther Adams, Stephen Leek, Dobrinka Tabakova, Ko Matsushita, and others. Other examples of this concept includes the cycles Madrigals of Love (2010), Moon Songs (2012), and Amber Songs (2014), in which several celebrated composers wrote choral miniatures on love, the moon, or arrangements of Latvian folk songs, respectively.

More recently, Kamēr... has developed and taken part in various projects such as the concert exhibition “Kalpotājs. Blumbergs. Kamēr...” (2018), “Sea symphony” (2019, Aachen, Germany), musical “Westside story” (2019), “Penabur International Choir festival” (2019, Jakarta, Indonesia), documentary “Choir. Conductor. Kamēr... “ (2019), performance “Kamēr... on the river” (2020), “Leading voices” festival (2022, Utrecht, the Netherlands), audiovisual performance “Silence falls” (2022), “The New Reflections of the Waves” (2022), theatre play “A Christmas carol” and musical “Lady in the dark” (2022/2023).

Youth Choir Kamer
Jurģis Cābulis, conductor

Youth Choir Kamer
Over the last thirty years, Kamēr... has achieved its sound by cultivating its own signature performance style. Both full emotional surrender, a characteristic of amateur singers, as well as the strictest criteria for vocal quality, are of equal importance for the choir. This is expressed in the ellipsis encoded in the choir's name, Kamēr..., which means "while" in English. This entails the motto: "While we are still young, anything is possible."

Many of the choir's singers are highly skilled and experienced, a significant share of them also music students. This generally high level of vocal and musical skill helps maintain internal competition among the voice groups, which in turn ensures a high musical quality overall. Despite the perfectionism and attention to detail that sometimes goes even beyond professional standards, the choir is essentially amateur, its singers having other full-time occupations. Thus, musical education or previous choir experience is not a prerequisite for singing in Kamēr...

The choir begins a new season every September, when it holds auditions for new singers. These candidates are evaluated with regard to their vocal and pitch abilities. A high level of skill and experience is not obligatory, as the choir's vocal coaches later help develop the new singers' skills, as long as they exhibit enough talent, ability and commitment.

The aforementioned core values of the choir - emotional surrender and vocal quality - are both tested before every major concert programme, in individual or group singing examinations. There, the choir members are asked to perform all the pieces individually, and the choir conductors and vocal coaches then make a decision about the lineup for the concert, based on the singers' performance in this examination.

Jurģis Cābulis
(1992) is the artistic director and chief conductor of the youth choir Kamēr..., the artistic director of the Riga Cathedral Choir School Mixed Choir, as well as the head of the conducting department, and the conductor of the Riga Chamber Choir Ave Sol.

He has received his bachelor's and master's degrees in choral conducting at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music under Andris Veismanis and Kaspars Ādamsons. In 2017, he was awarded the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music Annual Award for Young Musician. Jurģis Cābulis has been recipient of high-standing awards in the 5th Jāzeps Vītols international Choral Conductors Competition (2014); Towards Polyphonycompetition (2014); Juozas Naujalis International Competition for Choral Conductors (2017) and was a semi-finalist for the prestigious Eric Ericsson Award (2021).

In 2019, he recorded the choral music album AETERNUM by the composer J. Jančevskis with the Riga Cathedral Choir School Mixed Choir, under the distinguished British classical music recording company Hyperion Records.

In 2021, Jurģis Cābulis won the most acclaimed Latvian academic music award – the Latvian Grand Music Award – for the best concert of the year, AMAO OMI.

Booklet for Northern Echoes