Ants Tammemägi
Good things come in small packages, they say, and the tiny country of Estonia — population of only 1.3 million — proves this correct. Once every five years it holds a truly epic event: the world’s largest choral festival. It’s hard to imagine 35,000 people all singing the same song together on one giant stage. But it happens. Hundreds of Estonian choirs are joined by dozens of foreign choirs and meld into one single group. The most recent Festival took place on July 6 and 7, 2019. Over 70,000 spectators listened to the mass of voices, occasionally singing along and all the time enthusiastically waving national flags. My wife Ally and I were immersed in the overwhelming crowds and loved their infectious exuberance, friendliness and fantastic pride in being Estonian. It was an enormous, emotional celebration. (Pikemalt Eesti Elu 21.02.2020 paber- ja PDF/digilehes.)