The VOENA Children’s Choir and Executive Director Annabel Murray perform in a new music video featuring a song inspired by Lindsey Stirling’s “Roundtable Rival.” The choir will debut the song during their upcoming trip to Croatia. (Photo: Don Leatherman)
The VOENA Children’s Choir is incorporating both the familiar and the foreign on its upcoming tour of Croatia.
The internationally acclaimed choir has traveled the world performing its multicultural and multilingual songs, including an annual visit to Carnegie Hall, but these overseas trips rarely feel like coming home.
Five years after the choir’s first visit to Croatia, VOENA’s long-awaited return to Croatia will see the arrival of ten handpicked vocalists aged between 12 and 19. The intrepid travelers will be accompanied by world-renowned Italian guitarist Peppino D’Agostino, who will pair the young professionals with his decades of travel and talent.
Led by Executive Director Annabel Murray, the two-week cultural tour is more than just a performance opportunity: it’s a chance to revisit and reconnect with the hospitality, customs, language and cuisine that left such an indelible impression on Murray and her students in 2019.
“We’ve already built a lot of relationships,” Marie said, and the choir’s first trip to Croatia laid the foundation for relationships that will last for years.
“When I go to these villages, I see the same people still working with children,” Marie says, “and I still work with VOENA, so it’s like a reunion.”
VOENA’s mission, “Uniting the World with Children’s Voices,” has guided the choir since its founding in 1994. Yet, despite being aligned with that mission, the trip to Croatia was pure chance.
Croatian drummer Elvis Katic, who played in the Croatian/Bosnian band Rock Ko Fol, was living in Venicia when he heard about VOENA’s activities.
Katic approached Murray and asked, “Have you ever considered Croatia?” Impressed by the choir’s commitment to world music, Katic was convinced Croatia would welcome an American choir that sang in multiple languages, including Croatian as well as English.
In the end, Katic’s guess proved correct: “They were like, ‘What? American kids care about our music?'” Marie said with a laugh. She said the audience was thrilled with the three songs they performed in Croatian.
VOENA’s impact was not one that would soon be forgotten: “We are invited to come back to Croatia every year for these festivals,” Marie said.
In addition to entertaining audiences at these festivals with Croatian songs and American classics, Marie wants her students to be as immersed in the culture as possible. As part of the cultural exchange, she will be running a youth workshop with the Sfida Choir, a group of high school klapa singers, to teach VOENA the a capella style of klapa.
Marie also sends her students klapa-style videos in advance, giving them a chance to get used to the sounds. Beyond the videos, Marie also taps into the expertise of Croatian VOENA parents. Their anecdotes about where they grew up and life there help give her students the “big family feel” that Marie wants for her children.
Siblings and parents also accompany the students on the tour, ensuring that the “sense of family” remains. For longtime VOENA parent, former board member and current spokesperson Patrick VandeWeg, the trip is a family vacation and performance experience all rolled into one.
The Vandeweghe daughters, both of whom began singing at age 5, are now 12 and 14, and this summer they’re celebrating a series of monumental firsts: Not only will the Vandeweghe sisters be touring, but they’ll also be flying overseas for the first time.
“She has a calendar and she marks the days,” Vandewegh said of her youngest daughter. “For the last six months, she’s been saying, ‘Six months, five months, three days,'” Vandewegh laughed.
Tools like Google Maps and photos of the hotels helped make the trip more real for the girls. “Once they started to see where we were going and what we were going to do, they got really excited,” Vandeweghe said, joking that there probably won’t be a McDonald’s there yet.
Finding comfort on the road is similar to the comfort many of Vandeweghe’s students find on the VOENA stage, as she recalls watching her two young daughters grow in just a few weeks, learning complex songs on demand.
“I’ve seen this explosion of confidence,” Vandeweghe says, “and it carries over into other areas of their lives.”
All of the VOENA students reflect the discipline and passion that Vandeweghe sees in her daughters, but this is especially evident in those selected for this trip.
When traveling abroad, Marie makes it a priority to choose experienced performers who can practice and handle their parts. Among the students traveling to Croatia, there are three returning families and the rest are first-timers.
Introducing new generations of VOENA families while honoring longtime ones is part of Marie’s broader focus on fostering connections.
“This is important to me post-COVID,” Marie said, “because during COVID, a lot of kids were isolated from each other, isolated from their friends. That’s why I feel like we need to promote family, family, family. Person-to-person interaction, in-person interaction.”