Gents Universitair Koor
In Sint-Michielskerk during the Ghent Festival there are daily musical relaxation moments. A rather bland name for free high-level concerts. There is much more to experience than merely relaxing. Every day crowds come. Often an older audience that enjoys the free performances. Here you see that the Ghent Festival is more than hanging around, drinking and the iconic nocturnal Vlasmarkt. When I arrive something before the start time, the church is packed, only in the side aisle are there a few chairs left.
The women and men of the GUK, the Ghent University Choir, stand unnoticed at the back and side among and behind the audience. They start humming, it looks like a flash mob. At UGent, not only is studied and taught, singing and making music also happens.
This choir concert is an offshoot of their "In Fool Bloom" concerts from recent months, with flowers and plants as a guiding thread. The GUK, under the direction of Joris Derder, even won a gold medal with it at the Musica Orbis competition in Prague, the week before the Ghent Festival. Because of that Prague adventure, in addition to English songs they also have some Czech songs on their program. They conclude with the authentically Flemish "Lied van mijn land", known to the older audience. With thunderous applause they take their leave, they have made everyone in the church happy. A memorable concert.
Protestant church
Besides the large well-known Catholic city churches (Sint-Baafskathedraal, Sint-Niklaas, Sint-Jacobs and Sint-Michielskerk) where concerts are organized during the Ghent Festival, there are also two Protestant churches where concerts are organized during the Ghent Festival, the Rabotkerk and the church in the Brabantdam.
On July 21st, the English Leicester University Chamber Choir sings in the Brabantdamkerk. "The Road Home" is the title of the program around family and belonging, as the conductor explains. Here too, just as at the GUK concert in Sint-Michielskerk, the church is packed. This again shows what a great cultural festival the Ghent Festival is. Even outside the festival zone, like here in this church.
The interior of the church is a total contrast to a Catholic church. White walls, no statues, no stained glass. No artworks, except a metre-high sculpture with a sower and heads receiving seed on the ground. No stone floor tiles, but a wooden floor. That has an excellent effect on the acoustics, you notice it as soon as the choir starts. No reverberation like in Sint-Michielskerk, the small choir sometimes sounds heavenly pure.
Soprano and organ
Back to "Musical relaxation moments" in Sint-Michielskerk. On Thursday a song recital is on the program. Soprano Lies Vandewege fills the church with her powerful voice. She is equally at home in opera, art song and recital. Sometimes somewhat too dramatic phrasing for Bach, Händel or Vivaldi, the purist might say, but Lies sings full and exuberantly.
She is accompanied at the organ by the Bulgarian Vessela Dyakova, who has been active in our country for half her life as a pianist and organist. Sweet sounds she draws from the small Blank positive organ from 1974, which was brought from Zwolle to Ghent in 2015 and is placed at the front of Sint-Michielskerk.
Troubadour
The tenth concert of my Ghent Festival is not a real concert, but a kind of musical finale. For many years Wim Claeys has been the Ghent troubadour. A folk singer like Karel Waeri in the nineteenth and Walter De Buck in the twentieth century. Not classical music, but Ghent classics!
More than with Waeri or De Buck, Wim Claeys' goal is to keep the Ghent dialect alive in our time of globalization. With his many initiatives for children and young people, we can say he succeeds quite well. His Ghent children's choir is called De Stemband, his youth choir has the laconic and funny Ghent name "ben binst bezig" (I'm in the process), also the name of his show with Ghent songs and jokes in the Lakenmetershuis on the Vrijdagsmarkt.
With his accordion, Wim Claeys was also to be seen on the stage of Trefpunt near Sint-Jacobs, from where the Ghent Festival experienced its revival with Walter De Buck in the sixties. It was edition 183 this year, the Ghent Festival remains free, more than one and a half million visitors came this year, the largest cultural festival in all of Europe!