The State Choir LATVIJA and Artistic Director Māris Sirmais invite audiences during the second half of August and the start of September to the International Sacred Music Festival, the most extensive Latvian sacred music event of the year.
The concert will be conducted by Krista Audere, a Latvian conductor currently living and working in the Netherlands. She is the conductor of the chamber choir at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a choral conducting lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. As a guest conductor, she regularly collaborates with the Netherlands Chamber Choir, the Netherlands Radio Choir, and Cappella Amsterdam. Since 2025, she has also served as the principal guest conductor of the Swedish Radio Choir.
Krista Audere has previously collaborated with the State Choir "Latvija" at the 25th and 26th International Sacred Music Festivals and now returns with a concert program intertwining spiritual love lyricism by Scandinavian composers (Torbjørn Dyrud, Knut Nystedt, Sven–David Sandström, Martin Ødegaard) and French composer Pierre Villette.
The concert’s guest artist is violinist Paula Šūmane, whose performance will weave throughout the program — both in solo violin episodes and in organic interplay with the choir.