2023-11-14 07:32:26
Key figures
Budget: €500,000, financed by the city of Nantes (€320,000 in 2022 to which are added premises, communication, etc.), the Ministry of Culture (€50,000 on various CitéMonde projects), the operator of Semitan public transport (€20,000), private partners (€20,000), CitéMonde (€30,000) and contributions (€20,000). 12 foreign languages were sung by the choristers in 11 editions of Urban Voices. The choir of 1,000 voices performs in several shows for 500, as it cannot accommodate them all together on stage.
Since 2011, Urban Voices has recruited amateurs from all over Nantes and taught them original repertoire, with the aim of forming a choir of 1,000 people. These choristers come from the city and its suburbs and perform, at the end of the workshop, on the stage of the Cité des congrès, with professional singers and musicians. A unique experience and yet accessible to all, thanks to subsidies from the city and the involvement of everyone over a short period of time: two months to put on the show, which opens the summer season, Le Voyage à Nantes, at the beginning of July.
Jean-Marc Ayrault, mayor of Nantes from 1989 to 2012, was the first to trust the intuition of Karim Ammour, founder of the Urban Voices choir: he thought he might train 1,000 people in a short time and bring them to express themselves together on a stage of national and international importance. The magic lies partly in this number, which sounds like a crazy bet. “Some people cannot sing in individual lessons but can do so as a group,” explains choir director and artistic director, Karim Ammour.
Varied social origins
In a forty-year career, he was an animator before…
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