Choral Conducting Workshop & Open Sing-Along
Choral Conducting Workshop: 09 AM – 05:30 PM, 25 – 27 Aug 2026
Registration link (10 participants max)
Open Sing-Along: 06:30 PM, 27 Aug 2026
Registration link (open for everyone)
Vietnam Youth Music Institute – VYMI
136 Trần Thủ Độ, Hoàng Liệt, Hà Nội
From the organizer:
What happens when a conductor does not simply “give beats”, but truly listens?
Listening to the score, listening to the singers, listening to the sound being created – and listening to the musical imagination behind the notes written on the page. For Kerstin Behnke, the conductor connects these different ways of listening and transforms the written score into a shared musical experience.
From 25–27 August, Goethe-Institut Hanoi, in cooperation with VYMI, invites Professor Kerstin Behnke, reowned conductor of choirs and orchestras from Germany, to lead a workshop for choral conductors. The workshop approaches conducting not simply as giving beats or instructions to a choir, but as a process of creating the conditions in which music can emerge naturally.
Throughout the workshop, practical conducting, vocal work, rehearsal techniques and artistic reflection will be closely connected. Participants will sing, conduct, observe and reflect together, while working on selected repertoire from different periods of music history.
The workshop is intended for 10 choral conductors with different levels of experience, with a particular focus on those working with community choirs and school choirs. Alongside exploring different approaches to conducting, participants will gain practical tools that can be directly transferred to their own rehearsals and work with their choirs.
The programme will conclude with an Open Sing Along on the evening of 27 August, open to everyone – choir members and the local community alike.
No professional singing experience or previous choral experience is required. Participants are invited to discover the joy of collective music-making through vocal improvisation and accessible choral repertoire. From those who practise conducting to anyone who simply wants to sing together, the evening offers an opportunity to listen to one another, sing together and experience how music can emerge through a group.
About conductor Kerstin Behnke
She has been director of the Berliner Cappella and is still conducting the chamber choir TONIKUM in Berlin. She is artistical director of the LandesJugendChor Saar and starting in May 2017 also of the via-nova-choir Munich. She has been working with numerous choirs and orchestras, such as Kammersymphonie Berlin, Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg, the Brandenburger Symphoniker, and the Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, Markells Voices and Rias-Kammerchor.
Kerstin Behnke’s work as a conductor is on linking musical and extra-musical material thematically, thereby establishing new connections and making them accessible to experience. The venues are integral parts of the events: outside the concert hall, music enters into dialogue with its new surroundings; in the concert hall, extra-musical elements lead beyond the traditional boundaries of a musical performance.
A particular concern of Kerstin Behnke is to revive forgotten works by female composers and to make them known to a wider audience. Thus she conducted, for example, the world premiere of the orchestral version of Lili Boulanger’s “Hymne au Soleil,” reconstructed by the Berlin composer Oliver Korte. Numerous premieres, the Berliner Cappella’s anual composition award, and the continual inclusion of compositions from the second half of the 20th century testify to Kerstin Behnke’s interest in contemporary music.
Follow updates on event’s page.
