GOA UNIVERSITY
CHOIR
Santiago Lusardi Girelli
Artistic Director
VRPP - Visiting Research Professors Programme
Anthony Gonsalves Western Music Chair
Goa University
ABOUT US
The Goa University Choir was founded in August 2013 under the baton of Maestro Dr. Santiago Lusardi Girelli, Visiting Research Professor under the Western Music Chair of the Goa University.
Since its creation, the GU CHOIR has offered more than dozens of programs, concerts, and workshops across Goa and India, receiving excellent commentaries from the audience and press alike. During the last four years, the Choir has offered more than 35 concerts at several important venues all around Goa and India, it has also collaborated and shared scenario with renowned artists from all around the world: India, Africa, Asia, Europe, and America, among them: Cappella della Luce Ensemble (Spain), Rakesh Chaurasia (INDIA), the St Ephraim Choir (Hungary), the SOI - Symphonic Orchestra of India, Vandalia and the Seville Chamber Choir (Spain), Agshavali Male Choir (Georgia), the Bombay Chamber Orchestra among other. The University Choir has hosted in these four years more than 180 international scholars, artists, and world-class soloists.
The GU CHOIR is an innovative artistic project that works as an educational, artistic, and research project, and is most probably the very first University Choir in India. Associated with the Anthony Gonsalves Western Music Chair, the GU CHOIR, under the baton of its Maestro, has achieved important goals such as singing in more than 20 languages, blending Indian music with the Gregorian chant, and the performance of the St Mathews Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach at the Sacred Music Festival 2017 in collaboration with more than 40 artists coming from Europe and America in 2017. In 2017 the GU Choir released its first album and has recorded original soundtracks for the documentary on the life of Goan activist Aquino Braganza. For October 2019 the GU CHOIR is preparing its second album production with original contemporary choral music composed specially for the Choir by different worldwide composers. The GU CHOIR has done the Indian premier the MisaTango with the Carnegie Hall Resident Composer, Mtro Palmeri together with the SOI – Symphony Orchestra of India at the NCPA in Nov 2018, and sung the spectacular Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at the NCPA for the 50 Years celebration of the NCPA-Mumbai in Feb 2019.
The GU Choir is a dynamic institution where GU students, faculty, and people from the Goan community meet to achieve beauty through the ancient and novel practice of singing.
