International choral project dedicated to the unknown deserter

From 2014 until 2018 Europe, and especially Belgium and Flanders will commemorate the First World War when so many people from all over the world fought against each other and died, many of them in “Flanders Fields”.

The Brussels Brecht-Eislerkoor wants to turn the spots on the deserter and all war resisters, who say with Carl Sandburg “Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come”.  

We would like to organize an international choir event with participants from all over the world to put a statement that war is not the right way to solve problems.  Therefore we would like 2014 to be “a year for the deserter” starting on the international UN peace day 21/9/2014 and lasting till the next peace day, 20/9/2015
(http://internationaldayofpeace.org/about/background.html).

The local Belgian peace movement will support the project with information and discussions that will also be available on the internet in English and French. 

The kick-off day will probably be a Belgian holiday with local choirs that will be joined by choirs from our neighboring countries Great-Britain, France, Germany and Holland.

For the closing event on September 21st, 2015 we hope to organize the “6 or 12 hours of the deserter” with choirs participating from different countries that had soldiers in the War (list included at the end of this message), each in their home town and passing on the tone to the next choir.  This will be streamed for viewing on the internet.  A video artist will help us to realize technically.

All choirs participating sing there own favorite peace songs including own newly composed song.  We have asked Frederic Rzewski a famous American composer who lives in Brussels and he gave us his support.  He wrote some interesting pieces for the peace movement (see http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer/Rzewski.php  “Stop the War” and “No more War”).  The song will probably be for 4 voices SATB and a capella.

We are looking for choirs that would like to participate or stay in touch:

• Please contact us if  your choir would like to participate or if you want to stay in contact.
• You’re welcome to present any choral songs about the deserter, or other texts, poems,.., from your country.
• You can also just pass this information on to other choirs you know that might be interested. 

You can contact us by e-mail: 

Note:  all participation will be voluntary and there will be no remuneration.  We can only provide the scores of the new song for free and the technical requirements will be financed by sponsors and public funding.