2024 m. šimtmetį mininti Lietuvos dainų šventė ''Kad giria žaliuotų''

What is a century? What significance one hundred years hold in the infinity of our time? It takes one hundred years for a pine to grow, it can also be a life span of a fortunate human, who lives the life watching the changing surface of the world, while becoming more and more certain that in the run of centuries the foundation of the world stays intact. What glued us together as a community back then in 1924, at the first Lithuanian Song Celebration, and what would still bind in 2024 - one century past, when we would meet again? We will certainly be different, yet the same – the singing and dancing Lithuanian nation, speaking the same language and cherishing the same culture.

What is a century? It is a time span needed to mature as a State, as a society, to become a flushing green forest, where every pine has its own voice. It is the voice of free and creative Lithuania. It is the voice of our memory. It is your and my voice celebrating our binding tradition and its vitality.

The celebration of the anniversary provides an excellent chance to name our core values. Where are we heading to by restlessly coming and coming together? What do we wish to convey by saying these meaningful and obliging words – our values? The meaning and weight of these words seem to be growing today given the current reality of the pandemic and the war that is silencing thousands of voices.

Our values are vitality with no end. Vitality, impossible to be suppressed and forgotten for it is the one, but shared among all of us. For it is our vital capacity flowing through centuries over generations, from the memory to the future, from the home to the world, from the language to the song, from 1924 to 2024. Thus, preparing for the anniversary Lithuanian Song Celebration we lean on the key word – vitality – and invite everyone to join in reflection on our present and future existence.

The title of the anniversary Lithuanian Song Celebration - “Green Forest Forever” – codes the goal to our community, outlines our duty to acknowledge the Who and Why planted the green forest a century ago, as well as our obligation to grow it for the future generations to benefit from its shade. Let’s meet in 2024 to sing and dance our past and our present discovering both the past and the present tenses of the key word – vitality – of a human and culture, of a tree and a bird. This word is about us. Us, as the community, the kin. Us, who make Lithuania.

Ensembles Evening “The Tree of Life”

The Ensembles Evening stands out in the program of the Song Celebration with its authentic threefold composition. It is made up of three elements: a choir singing Lithuanian folk songs and pieces written by composers specifically for this concert, a folk instrument orchestra and a stylised folk dance group. The Ensembles Evening “The Tree of Life” is undoubtedly one if the most significant events of the anniversary Lithuanian Song Celebration of 2024.

The creators and performers of the Ensembles Evening interpret the tree of life as a concept of the world. In the program, the four divine elements will meet: the fire, the air, the water, and the earth, and they will all raise the nation’s tree of life.

New compositions of folk songs, written especially for the occasion of the Song Celebration, will both have a contemporary sound and will maintain their authenticity; choral singing will intertwine with folklore, and new pieces of stylised folk music groups and folk instrument orchestras will be in the spotlight with a distinguished sound.

The life-creating interaction of the natural elements will too reflect in the choreography of the Ensembles Evening: traditional dances will uncover in harmony with stylised folk and modern numbers. By both complementing and being in contrast to each other, they will make up an unforgettable spectacle, which will also be complemented by special costumes, the latest video and light technologies, as well as scenography.

More than 4,000 singers, musicians and dancers will perform the theatrical program of the Ensembles Evening. The audience will hear both well-known and beloved pieces and 20 new compositions, written for this program specifically.

Vocal Ensembles Concert “Who are You, Earth?”

Vocal Ensembles Concert was included into the program of the Lithuanian Song Celebration in 2018. There, the best groups representing the genre meet, and the most outstanding contemporary vocal music shines bright through their voices. 31 groups will go on stage in the Vocal Ensembles Concert of 2024. The performers will come from all over Lithuania together with the guests from the USA. This concert of the highest mastery will reflect on the theme of sacredness: the sacredness as a space of connection, and as an opportunity to meet the powers that generate it.

Who are you, Earth? How long will we keep destroying and disrespecting you? These are the questions that will be reflected on not only by the music, but also by scenography.

The Vocal Ensembles Concert will feature pieces by contemporary Lithuanian composers and debuts of new compositions by Lina Kairytė, Vaiva Kriščiokaitytė, Rimvydas Mitkus, Saulius Petreikis, and Vaclovas Augustinas. The concert will take the audience on a journey of visuals, sounds and reverence.

Brass Band Concert “Brass Storm”

The centenary Song Celebration stands as a great opportunity for the reflection of the Lithuanian musical culture, which will be presented during the Brass Band Concert “Brass Storm”, among other events. A grand joint orchestra will be accompanied by drum players, dancers, and singers, whose combined energy will leave a remarkable impression.

The concert “Brass Strom” will invite the audience to take a deeper breath – to one’s essence ­– during the anniversary Song Celebration. By blowing in the one-hundred-year tradition into their instruments, they will blast out the most modern event of the Song Celebration, which will combine music with its visual features.

In this musical and visual journey, the program by various orchestras will guide the audience through the past, the present and the future times in order to hear the music and to see it, to recognize historical contexts and to see the future prospects, to hear silence and to experience its colour. The performers will speak to the contemporary times in their language while being on the same side as the life and wind is, maintaining music in their hands and in their hearts even during the biggest storms.

Dance Day “Through the Bridges of the Ages”

The Dance Day concert has always taken the audience by surprise with its large scale – more than 9,000 performers come on stage. In the field, the dancers make up impressive compositions, and the audience cannot take their eyes off trying to follow spins, steps and hand waves. The compositions unfold so organically, as if the dancers had kept rehearsing every day in a circle of thousands of people.

The bridge, the assigned symbol for the Dance Day concert, will correspond to the accents of the flow and change of time, the conception of the meaning of being, as well as the best moments in the continuity of the Song Celebration, which are all encoded in the name of the Song Celebration – “May the Green Forest Grow”. In the folklore, a bridge is perceived as an overwhelming and multi-meaning link between the Earth and the sky, the worlds of the people and the gods, between being and non-existence, the beginning and the end, the real and the imaginary, the youth and the old age, one’s own and foreign culture.

The program of the Dance Day “Through the Bridges of the Ages” will consist of four-part artistic performances by dances groups of various ages. The most important idea of the Dance Day program is the eternal search for one’s bridges, which leads to the harmony of the people, the nature, the nations, and the state.

Song Day “May the Green Forest Grow”

The finale of the Song Celebration week is the Song Day. On this day, crowds of people are going to the Vingis Park through all known entries; they gather here to have the experience vivid for the rest of their lives: 12,000 performers will sing about a century of life on the park stage, built specifically for the Song Day.

The Song Day “May the Green Forest Grow” will conclude the week of the anniversary Song Celebration. A century is both a period of time, and a continuous song: its words ­are the history of our states and our culture, brightly shining in the tradition of the Song Celebration of one hundred years. Song is the core and an irreplaceable word of this tradition, which is the focus of the creators of the Song Day, who have constructed the program out of the most significant and the most melodious pieces that witness the change of time and the path of the singing culture, as well as give meaning to us – a singing, creative nation, corresponding to the same words of the song with different voices.

At the anniversary Song Day, the song will unfold not only through the voices of the participants and the audience. The song will become the storyteller, the listener and the interlocutor, it will be thinking, talking, feeling nervous, it will be preparing and listening to us – speaking and going silent in unity. The voice of the song and our words about it, our silence and the song lyrics about us – it will all become one in the Song Day of 2024, as the green lush forest unites the ground and the sky.