There are few choirs in Poland that have as distinct repertoire as the Choir of Maritime University of Szczecin. An absolute hallmark and specialty of...

There are few choirs in Poland that have as distinct repertoire as the Choir of Maritime University of Szczecin. An absolute hallmark and specialty of the choir, led by Sylwia Fabiańczyk-Makuch, is the performance of maritime themed pieces. However, obviously they do not exhaust their repertoire, which includes sacral and folk music as well as arrangements of popular music. Polish maritime-inspired choral music has a very long history. Feliks Nowowiejski is considered to be the father of the genre. However, it is an undoubtedly unexploited topic, demanding new, fresh and original ideas. The Choir of Maritime University of Szczecin regularly commissions works from Polish composers and is always met with great enthusiasm on the part of the authors. It is caused by the fact that it is very hard to find a better apparatus to mimic the spirit and sounds of the sea, as is an a cappella choir. The sound of the choir homogeneous like water, in which an infinite number of droplets merge into one, waves, flows, individual voices emerge from the sound mixture and plunge back into it, and sonoric vocal effects can suggestively transport the listener into the world of the noise of waves and screaming gulls. The composers, whose work can be found on the Sound of the Sea album, represent three different generations: there is the sage of Polish choral music, Marek Jasiński, recognized and experienced artists such as Miłosz Bembinow or Janusz Stalmierski, and promising composers of the younger generation, such as Zuzanna Koziej or Katarzyna Danel. The common stylistic denominator for the album is the maritime theme. But is the titular Sea defined in any way? Is it the Baltic Sea, the 8 Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, or maybe some general, undefined sea, the archetype of which lies somewhere in our subconscious?