It is Assumption Eve here in Kraków, and the city is busy with the three-day weekend. For us, there is even a festival of sacred music concerts, Cracovia Sacra, underway tonight, with events starting as late as 10:15 p.m. at the city’s wonderful churches, museums, and religious houses.
On Sunday afternoon, participants checked in for the Dominican Fathers’ week-long sacred music event in Kraków, the “Extraordinary Music Workshop“, and the events of the program start Monday morning: that is, on Assumption Day.
This will be the seventh edition of the event, but the first with a track of sessions conducted in English. I don’t know what the final attendance will be, but a volunteer told me the count of registrations was over 320, a figure that shows the vigorous interest in sacred music in Poland. Most of that attendance by far is by Polish participants, who know that life in Kraków is basically normal despite the war in Ukraine, whose border is 150 miles away.
All that I can show so far to give a hint of the week to come is in a couple of pictures; first, the main image for this post (above), showing the wonderful St. Ann’s University Church, where some of the liturgies will take place; and a snapshot to show the nice work that has gone into preparing the songbooks for the program:
Plus a little sample of the sound of the organ at St. Ann’s, made a few Sundays ago: