Uitmuntend

Yesterday, the choir of which I've been a member for these past few years went to the provincial tournament—for the first time in its existence. For those of you unaware with what this is: the "provincial tournament" isn't a tournament in the traditional sense (which would have a winner etc); instead, you get to sing in front of an expert jury which will classify you in one of six categories; the category you're in then determines government subsidy your group gets. This is done for all nonprofessional music groups, and makes for a pretty fair way of deciding who gets what, IMO. Apart from that, it's of course also fun.

Anyway, as said this was the first time our choir went to such a "tournament", but of course we weren't alone; apart from us, there were six other choirs, two of which were also part of the Ekerse C-koren: Cantando (the semi-professional choir of our group) and Cantilene (for those between the ages of 18 and 25 (or 16 and 25 for boys).

And we did well. Cantilene (who did very well in the most recent edition of the 'Koor van het Jaar' contest) was categorized in the 'superieure afdeling' ('superior category'), with 75% in that category. Cantando did even better than that; they achieved a score of 93%, also in the superieure afdeling. This is the highest category in the whole system, so it deserves some special praise.

Caljenté, our choir, didn't quite reach that level yet; considering the fact that we've only existed about three years, however, that isn't very surprising. Yet, we did quite well; we were categorized in the 'Uitmuntendheid' category, with a score of 75% in that category. Uitmuntendheid (which would translate to something like 'greatness') is the third possible category, which puts us in the top half of the choirs of the province of Antwerp.

Quite an achievement for what is, after all, a fairly new choir. Of course we're all very happy with that—especially so our conductor, who was rather surprised when she heard the outcome...

For those interested, one of the choir members had a camera with him, and he put the four pieces we sang up on youtube: Credo, Dostoyno Yest, Wals van kwart voor middernacht, and Hodie Christus Natus Est. There're also films of the other choirse, but you'll have to look for those yourself ;-P