3 April 2019
The international jury meeting was hosted at the Drac Occitanie building in Toulouse, France, between the 11th and 14th of March. The jury members, representative of the three patron organisations (IFCM, ECA-EC and JMI), together with the conductor of the session, selected the best singers from 250 candidates. After many hours of listening to the numerous recordings and evaluating the applicants, the international jury finally chose 56 singers from 27 countries to be part of the World Youth Choir 2019 summer session in France and Portugal.
The selection was made taking into account the artistic and musical quality of each candidate through all the audition files submitted: voice range, sight reading abilities, vocal technical skills, ability to prepare a piece and voice performance throughout. The jury also took into consideration the complementarity of the voices of the singers selected, in order to create a cohesive group (in each section and for the whole choir) and, whenever possible, amplifying the diversity of countries represented in the World Youth Choir.
The choice was often tricky for the jury and the selected singers have now a heavy responsibility being part of the 2019 session. Many others could be also part of the choir and not being selected does not diminish their skills. The jury members invite all of them to continue vocal training to improve their musical abilities and performance and – for those who have not reached the age limit – to audition again next year.
