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Montana International Choral Festival opens in Missoula with international line-up and community sponsors
Summary
The Montana International Choral Festival opened its 2025 run in Missoula with choirs from across the United States, Europe and Africa, local ensembles and festival sponsors supporting four days of performances and a finale expected to feature about 400 voices.
The Montana International Choral Festival opened its 2025 program in Missoula with an evening of international and local choral performances, festival organizers and sponsors said. The program featured visiting ensembles including Vox Nova (Columbia, Missouri), an Estonian Radio Girls Choir, a choir from Tartu, Estonia, Landes Jugendchor (Germany), the Franciscan Choir of Kampala (Uganda) and local groups such as the University of Montana Chamber Choir and the 5 Valleys Chorus. The festival emcee also credited Missoula-area sponsors including the Montana Arts Council, the City of Missoula, the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, Byron Brewery and NBC Montana for making the event possible.
Festival organizers said the event has run since 1987 and runs across multiple days; the opening night program included selections across genres from Appalachian and gospel arrangements to Baltic and Malay-influenced choral works. Vox Nova presented three selections, identified in the program as an arrangement of the traditional Appalachian hymn “Will the Circle Be Unbroken (By and By),” a jazz arrangement of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” arranged by Take 6, and the gospel piece “Unclouded Day” by Sean Kirchner. The University of Montana Chamber Choir performed a program that included works drawing on Romanian-Hungarian and Baltic folk traditions; the Tartu ensemble invited audience participation for some pieces.
The festival highlighted cross-cultural elements: the Estonian groups incorporated folk dance and invited the crowd to join on refrains, and the Franciscan Choir of Kampala presented a courtship dance from western Uganda. Jurgen Neur, a representative of one of the festival’s major sponsors and a local German-American brewer, described hosting the German choir and praised Missoula as a welcoming host. “What a wonderful place we have here,” Neur said.
Organizers promoted additional festival events later in the weekend, including venue performances each day and a large finale described in the program as a “parade of nations” that will bring together several hundred singers. The emcee noted that the full festival schedule runs through Sunday with morning and afternoon concerts on successive days. Admission and event details were given as available on festival channels.
The opening-night program emphasized both international touring ensembles and community choirs, combining formal choral repertoire with staged or folk elements. The emcee and several presenters thanked volunteers and the University of Montana School of Music for partnership and logistical support. The festival remains scheduled to continue with multiple daytime performances and the advertised large-scale finale later in the weekend.
