Gents Universitair Koor
In Sint-Michielskerk, during the Ghent Festivities, there are daily musical interludes. A rather uninspiring name for free concerts of high quality. There is much more to experience than mere relaxation. Every day attracts a large crowd. Often an older audience that enjoys the free performances. Here you see that the Ghent Festivities are more than just hanging around, drinking and the iconic nighttime Vlasmarkt. When I arrive shortly before the start time, the church is packed, with only a few seats free in the side aisles.
The women and men of the GUK, the Gents Universitair Koor, stand unnoticed at the back and to the side between and behind the audience. They begin humming, it looks like a flash mob. At UGent, not only is there studying and teaching, but also singing and making music.
This choir concert is a spin-off 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 Festivities. Because of that Prague adventure, in addition to English-language songs, they also have some Czech songs on their program. They conclude with the quintessentially Flemish "Lied van mijn land", familiar to the older audience. With thunderous applause, they bid farewell, having made everyone in the church happy. A memorable concert.
Protestant Church
Besides the large well-known Catholic city center churches (Sint-Baafskathedraal, Sint-Niklaas, Sint-Jacobs and Sint-Michielskerk) where concerts are organized during the Ghent Festivities, there are also two Protestant churches where concerts are organized during the Ghent Festivities: the Rabotkerk and the church on Brabantdam.
On July 21, the Leicester University Chamber Choir performs in the Brabantdamkerk. "The Road Home" is the title of the program centered on family and belonging, as the conductor explains. Here too, just like at the GUK concert in Sint-Michielskerk, the church is packed. This again demonstrates what a major cultural festival the Ghent Festivities is. Also outside the festival zone, as here in this church.
The interior of the church is a total contrast to a Catholic church. White walls, no statues, no stained glass windows. No artworks, except for a meter-high sculpture with a sower and heads receiving seed on the ground. No stone floor tiles, but a wooden floor. This 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 sounds occasionally heavenly pure.
Soprano and Organ
Back to "Musical Interludes" in Sint-Michielskerk. On Thursday there is a song recital on the program. Soprano Lies Vandewege fills the church with her powerful voice. She is equally at home in opera, song and recital. Sometimes a bit 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 Bulgarian Vessela Dyakova, who has been active in our country for half her life as a pianist and organist. She draws sweet tones from the small Blank positive organ from 1974, which was brought from Zwolle to Ghent in 2015 and is positioned in front of Sint-Michielskerk.
Troubadour
The tenth concert of my Ghent Festivities 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, it is Wim Claeys' aim to keep the Ghent dialect alive in our time of globalization. With his many initiatives for children and young people, we can say he is doing quite well at that. His Ghent children's choir is called De Stemband, his youth choir has the laconic and funny Ghent name "ben binst bezig" (I'm meanwhile busy), also the name of his show with Ghent songs and jokes at the Lakenmetershuis on Vrijdagsmarkt.
With his accordion, Wim Claeys was also to be seen on the stage of Trefpunt at Sint-Jacobs, from where the Ghent Festivities experienced their revival with Walter De Buck in the nineteen-sixties. This year it was edition 183, the Ghent Festivities remain free, with more than one and a half million visitors this year, the largest cultural festival in all of Europe!