
Caroline Bryant
Editor-in-Chief
Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities Dr. Beth Gibbs was invited to conduct the 59th edition of the Festival Internacional de Cant Coral in Barcelona, Spain this past July.
The Festival Internacional de Cant Cora is an annual week-long choral festival premiered in 1964. Each year features a selection of choirs from around the world who applied to participate in one of the many workshops hosted by guest conductors. Choirs begin practicing an arrangement of songs chosen for their workshop of choice on Monday to perform their concert by Sunday.
“The daily routine is we have morning free because these are choirs that have come to visit Barcelona, whether they are from within Spain or there are international choirs, as well…” Gibbs said. “The mornings are free to do any tourist or visitor events. In the afternoons, there are workshops that go on every day.”
Gibbs’ invitation to work with the prestigious festival arose from her time in the Basque cities of Bilbao and San Sebastian during her Fulbright Scholar Grant for teaching in 2022. There, she taught choirs at Musikene, a graduate school for music students.
The Catalonian Choral Federation in Barcelona (CCFB) was her “secondary host institution,” whose proximity to the annual festival allowed her to attend in 2022. After watching choirs, speaking with conductors and composers and those connected to executives of CCFB, she was able to secure a spot as a director at the 2024 festival.
When selected, she was asked to teach a workshop on American choral music. The task challenged her, as fitting the history of American choral music into six songs felt “impossible.”
“I picked a concert of six pieces that represented American choral music. Obviously, that was a big task, so to narrow it down to six pieces is impossible, but I chose different styles, different eras, different things to highlight from our American choral traditions,” Gibbs said.
The workshop resulted in a concert of Randall Thompson’s “Last Words of David”; the folk arrangement of “Shenandoah” by James Erb; “Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal,” arranged by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw; Morten Lauridsen’s composition setting of the James Agee poem, “Shore on the Shining Night”; “Gloria” from the Ordinary of the Mass; and finishing with “Music Down In My Soul” arranged by Moses Hogan.
Gibbs’ arrangement includes folk (“Shenandoah”), early American (“Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal”), Latin-style (“Gloria”) and gospel (“Music Down In My Soul”), and features famous American poet James Agee.
Her workshop included 145 participants from choirs in Portugal and Turkey and individual performers from Spain. Though the “art itself is the same,” Gibbs persevered through the cultural and language boundaries she faced teaching choirs from different parts of the world.
During her rehearsals, she gave her directions in English to appease the choirs from Portugal and Turkey, and in Spanish.
“I’d try to explain an instruction and sometimes I’d forget: ‘Ok, did I just say that in Spanish, or did I just say that in English?” Gibbs said. “At one point about midweek, I told the singers, ‘If I forgot a language, or if I am not clear in one language or the other, just raise your hand and tell me what language you need the clarification in, and we’ll try again.”
Though Gibbs is a regular at domestic festivals, the “challenge, excitement and adventure” international festivals present excites her to participate in more. In 2025, she hopes to attend a festival in Estonia “which is going to be amazing.”
She also loves the opportunity to network with choirs and conductors around the world, as they all bring something unique to the table.
“You meet other people that attend those from other places and hopefully, just like any other networking element, leads to invitations to other events, perhaps,” Gibb said. “Anytime you meet people that are on executive boards of international organizations and choral organizations, they now know who you are, and see your work, and hopefully remember you for the next time they’re looking for someone.”