The Augsburg College choir, under the direction of Dr. Peter Hendrickson, recently returned from its two-week European Choir Tour to Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany where they connected one culture to another through music. This 66-voice choir, including Evan Boyce and Jennifer Olson from North Branch, sang to audiences who could speak little to no English at all.

The choir sang in a variety of venues, from the magnificent St. Stephenís Basilica in Budapest to St. Barbaraís Cathedra in Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic, a medieval building began in the late 14th century. The sang in one of the only churches in Dresden not destroyed by bombing raids during World War II, but still bears the scars from the destruction of war, to a plain church in the small Czech town of Krabcice, the audience being residents of a senior citizenís home, none of whom could speak English.

They toured the towns of Budapest, Prague, Kutna Hora, Dresden and Leipzig, and took in much of the local culture and food from each of their destinations. A more sobering experience for the choir was a tour of the Terezin Concentration Camp just outside of Prague. Although not an extermination camp, Terezin at one time held nearly 140,000 men, women and children, of which 34,000 died.

The final stop of the tour was at the American Choral Festival in the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany where the Augsburg Choir performed individually and teamed up with Northwestern Choir of St. Paul for several massed numbers.