There was a wonderful serendipity about the Latvian choir Maska’s well-deserved victory in the international competition of the City of Derry International Choir Festival last October: the beautiful winner’s trophy is in the shape of an oak tree, the symbol of Derry/Londonderry – the ‘Derry’ bit of the Northern Irish city’s name means ‘oak grove’ – while the name of Maska’s founding conductor Jānis Ozols translates as ‘John Oak’. No wonder he looked particularly delighted when he raised the trophy high at the awards ceremony.

Maska is a mixed-voice amateur choir of around 50 singers, based in the small, rural town of Pinki in the Municipality of Mārupe, 17 kilometres from the Latvian capital, Riga. Ozols founded Maska as a youth choir in 2000 – ‘I was young myself, I was working as a choirmaster with an adult choir in Pinki and I felt that the town needed something for young singers as well,’ he explains. ‘Somehow we are still singing together now.

‘From September 2003 until 2011 I was a member of the a cappella singing group Cosmos, which was very popular here, and we travelled a lot in Europe,’ he adds. Since Cosmos disbanded Maska has been the main focus of his musical career, though he has sidelines as a TV presenter and as a food influencer, initially through a written blog but now on TikTok.

Ozols plays an important part in the Latvian choral scene, both in conducting other national and regional choirs, and as a board member of organisations such as the Latvian Song Festival Foundation and Latvian National Centre for Culture. He is founder and artistic director of the International Baltic Sea Choir Competition, based in the coastal resort of Jūrmala, which has recently been accepted as a host for the prestigious European Grand Prix for Choral Singing, along with just five other venues: Tolosa (Spain), Arezzo (Italy), Debrecen (Hungary), Maribor (Slovenia), and Varna (Bulgaria). When we talked on Zoom earlier this year, Ozols had just been awarded Jūrmala’s Annual Prize for Culture 2023 for his significant contribution to the development of choral music and promotion of the city on the international stage.

Their performances in Derry demonstrated that Maska is comfortable performing a wide range of repertoire; I wondered if this reflected its conductor’s own varied experience. He received his early musical education as a choral conductor in the Emīls Dārziņš Music School and Riga Cathedral Choir School, going on to take a bachelor’s degree with Professor Sigvards Kļava and a masters supported by Professor Jānis Zirnis at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, and to study orchestral conducting at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. But alongside this intensive study of conducting technique and classical and folk repertoire he was working in his role as a professional baritone with Cosmos alongside ensembles such as Manhattan Transfer, Take 6, The Real Group and The Hilliard Ensemble and performers such as Bobby McFerrin and Björk.

Ozols responds by explaining that the choir’s name is no accident: ‘We can put different masks on and be different every time. We can do pop music, which we are doing at the moment, but we enjoy singing classical and of course our Latvian folk music which we think it is our duty to perform, to show everybody that in Latvia we have great composers and great music.’

Having said that, he admits that the competition’s requirement to sing one piece written before 1750 did take his singers into unfamiliar territory. They performed the Harmonia Sacra by Martinus Crucius very stylishly, but Ozols says it is the only piece of Renaissance music in their repertoire. ‘We have it for competitions, and because I’m a professional conductor I know how to do it, but in general early music is not our thing, I prefer to leave it to choirs from the Netherlands and Germany where they have real expertise in it.’

Maska’s track record in international competitions is impressive. They have competed in Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Finland, Slovenia, Spain and beyond – Ozols recalls a particularly busy period in September 2019 when they won first place in the mixed voice category and second in the contemporary music category of the Tokyo International Choir Competition, two gold medals at the Takarazuka International Chamber Choir Competition (also in Japan) and second place in the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)’s Eurovision Choir Competition in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Their schedule makes enormous demands on these amateur singers – how do they find the time to get to this standard? ‘Yes, we rehearse after they’ve all done a day’s work in other professions, so they are tired,’ Ozols admits, ‘but these kind of victories or super-interesting concerts are what they enjoy. They know that after all our hard work there will be maybe one second of magic, but it will be the happiest second in their lives.’

He adds that the process of learning repertoire well enough to perform it off copy is slow, not least because ‘probably 60 per cent of the singers don’t really read music. So we don’t rush, of course sometimes we have to rush, but for competitions the working process is slow, we work very hard from the beginning to get the maximum out of everything … out of the music, out of each singer, out of the choir, out of the blend …’ Some of the singers have quite a lot of previous experience, others don’t. In Latvia, he says, there is never any problem finding young women who want to sing, so he can be quite rigorous in excluding any who can’t pitch notes easily; but it’s harder to recruit men, ‘so if a man comes to our class wanting to sing and he can’t pitch, that’s my responsibility, to teach him how to sing.’

Ozols has quite an idiosyncratic style of conducting – sometimes full of dramatic gestures, sometimes almost coming to a halt. Is that important for helping his singers to interpret the text?

‘Yes, I think the technique of the conductor plays a huge role and I would say that here in Latvia the conducting school dates from Soviet times, it is quite Russian in style, it’s emotional … not just “click, click, click”, but to feel the music in your fingers, almost to touch it. And of course, now since the borders have been opened we see European and Asian performance; and I learned a lot during my time with Cosmos, when I saw a lot of things happening all over the world, and was able to decide for myself what is important and what maybe is not important. But yes, the conductor is always very responsible for what is happening but also is the person who inspires the choir.’

While there is a core membership of the choir that has remained consistent since around 2015, there is a turnover over of around 30-40 per cent most years as family and work commitments change. Most live in or near Pinki though they may work in Riga; some are students from further afield who are studying in Riga and a few members travel long distances on poor roads to be part of Maska. ‘We don’t give many concerts at home in Pinki as most of the concerts and events are in Riga and other cities, but we are very proud of our local identity, and I have to say a huge thank you to our municipality and local audience, which is very proud of us and supports us a lot.’

The choir has made three CD recordings. 7 Stories of the Gospel of Thomas, released in 2010, is an oratorio by percussionist and music producer Rihards Zaļupe, based on texts from one of the scrolls found in Upper Egypt in 1945, presenting a different view of the life of Jesus Christ. ‘It is a very interesting piece, and it was a different process for me … everything was on computer and I had to conduct to a click track,’ he says.

‘Then we made Ziema, a record of Christmas music by Laura Jēkabsone, who used to be our assistant conductor. She was studying composition and with Maska she had an instrument that enabled her to hear what she was writing! So we sang her very early pieces, and she knows how to write for us. Christmas is a very special time for us since early days – every year we organize a concert call ChristMASKAs.

‘The third CD is Dedication, a collection of most of the pieces which we have commissioned from different composers, so the dedications are for us.’ As well as more pieces by Jēkabsone and Zaļupe there are works by Pärt Uusberg, Vytautas Miškinis, Jānis Ķirsis, Renāte Stivriņa and Jānis Šipkēvics, and a couple of Latvian folksongs arranged by Ozols himself. The title also acknowledges the choir’s commitment to ‘the activity of giving a lot of your energy and time to something you think is important’.

Maska is currently working on a concert programme dedicated to a legendary Latvian rock group, Pērkons, with specially commissioned a cappella arrangements of some of their most popular and well-known songs.

In the liner notes for Dedication Ozols expressed his pleasure that the recording could be made in St John’s Church in Pinki and added ‘I would like to wish every listener to feel the energy, joy and flame of Maska singers that I feel every day!’

Clare Stevens works as a writer, editor and publicist in the Welsh March

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of Choir & Organ. Never miss an issue – subscribe today