06 29 18:00 Kaunas Song Valley | free admission

The first Lithuanian Song Celebration took place on August 23rd and 25th, 1924, in Kaunas. The event titled “Song Day” was opened by the President Aleksandras Stulginskis, who proposed singing the Lithuanian anthem, and it was performed by a choir of 3500 singers accompanied by a cheering crowd of tens of thousands of people.

Over the course of one hundred years, systems, fashions, architecture, and events have changed, but the chorists would gather to sing despite any circumstances. As the Lithuanian Song Celebration has developed and its program has expanded, the majority of the events were relocated to Vilnius. However, Kaunas has always remained especially important in the history of the Celebration. It is not unexpected that the tradition of opening the Lithuanian Song Celebration in Kaunas, particularly by hosting a Song Day there, has formed. This Song Day is smaller in scale than the Song Day at the Vilnius Vingis Park Stage concluding the whole week of events, yet it is no less cosy and subtle. The Song Celebration will be coming home after a hundred years.

The program of the Anniversary Song Day “Hills Green with Forests” draws inspiration from the leads of the first Song Celebration Juozas Naujalis, Julius Štarka, and Stasys Šimkus, and it will tell a story of bridges built by songs. Those bridges, over the one-hundred-year period, have led into the contemporary state and the youthful Kaunas. Almost 4,000 performers – chorists and dancers – will perform pieces connecting the history of the Song Celebration and the presence. The program will encourage the audience to dream about oaks and rivers, about green meadows and forests, and the face of the Earth: evolving, sustainable, voluminous.