It comes from Bosnia, where it was born with the aim of uniting and generating peace.
It has won several international prizes, including, to name but a few, the 1998 'Peace Prize' from the Tanenbaum Centre for Interreligious Understanding, the 2011 Pax Christi Prize and in 2016 a prize offered by the Chirac Foundation and presented by the then-President François Hollande.
It is called the "Choir Pontanima” and was founded in Sarajevo from a simple yet revolutionary idea: to bring together people of all religions who until a moment before had entered into a serious ethnic conflict. The choir's stated mission is to share different traditions and build lasting relationships, and this has been the case since it was founded in 1996.
At first, mistrust between people who considered themselves enemies was pervasive, and choir members were opposed by family and friends as if they were denying their own communities. They were also criticised on a theological level, as if the attempt to unite people stemmed from an interfaith and syncretic ideology rather than an ecumenical vision.
But perseverance has paid off and the choir has been able to perform more than 800 times all over the world, starting in Bosnia-Herzegovina, then in Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, China and the United States, bringing everywhere an unequivocal testimony of peace and beauty, according to the Abrahamitic spiritual heritage. Within the choir, the souls of Catholicism, the Orthodox Church, Judaism and Islam coexist.
Some twenty compositions have been written specifically for performance by this extraordinary choir, the most famous of which are Andrija Pavlič's Missa Bosniensis and Missa Herzegoviniensis, performed with the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra in 2009 and 2017.
In 2021, on the occasion of the 14th edition of the Festival Zelioli of Youth Choirs, the city of Lecco will also have the opportunity to discover this extraordinary experience. The Pontanima choir will perform a number of new works, including Laudato sii mi Signore by Maestro PierAngelo Pelucchi, artistic director of the Festival.
The surprises don't end here: to celebrate the 14th European Youth Choir Festival, we will have the pleasure of listening to a world premiere of the piece Adoro te devote, composed by Maestro Emir Mejremic, director of the choir. This piece, as well as Pelucchi's Laudato Sii, has been composed especially for the European Festival WeBEUnited and will be sung in Bosnian language during the concert on Friday 2 July and in Latin language during the Festival Mass on Sunday 4 July.