RiTardando – choir from the heart
Female choir to compete in Grado
It might be that St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim, Norway will have a staffing problem at the end of this month. The reason: 38 employees from different departments in the hospital will be abroad. More precisely, they will travel to Italy and compete as a choir group in the “Isola del Sole – International Choir Competition and Festival” on the sunny island Grado, located in the northern corner of the Adriatic Sea.
The choir at St. Olavs Hospital is a female choir called “RiTardando” and was founded in March 1994. Since that time the singers have been enjoying giving concerts for patients at the hospital as well as for the public presenting a varied repertoire from church music to Norwegian folk songs and pop music. Thus, their competition program in category B3 – Female choirs will include one piece by contemporary composer Egil Hovland, another piece by romanticist Edvard Grieg and a traditional Norwegian folk song called “Pols frå Dunderlandsdalen”. The conductor is Bjørn Vevang.
Anyway, patients at St. Olavs should not be too worried about the employee’s absence, since people on site are very experienced in handling this kind of situation, you see, RiTardando is regularly travelling abroad. They participated in the choir competition “In Canto… sul Garda” in October 2009, and have on three occasions been a part of Midt- Norsk Female Choir, conducted by Tove Ramlo-Ystad. They have travelled to Reykjavik and Tallinn as a result of this. In 2012 they visited Prague for the “Prague Advent Choral Meeting”, and in May 2014 they participated in the third Nordic Female Choir Festival in Åbo, Finland.
RiTardando is a very open-minded group of kind people, and is open to do choral projects with other groups, as you can see in this video:
Look forward to meet and connect with RiTardando in Grado from September 28 to October 2! More information is available on the official event website. Also follow the official Facebook page for regular updates!
