News
Dear Colleagues and Musician Friends all around the world,
The International Kodály Seminar has invited hundreds of musicians from all over the world to Zoltán Kodály’s birthplace, Kecskemét since its beginnings in 1970, when Mrs Sarolta Kodály organised the first Seminar.
In 2025 we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Kodály Institute, along with many other anniversaries.
The 34th International Kodály Seminar is going to be organized in light of this in a special way in the summer of 2025:
— starting on 28 July
— spiced with a Kodály Institute Alumni Reunion on the weekend of 2-3 August, and
— culminating and joining in the events of the 27th International Kodály Symposium organized between 4 and 8 August 2025.
The Seminar offers the usual activities in the first week: choral singing, musicianship training, choral conducting and methodology classes in early childhood, on primary and secondary level, and choir methodology. During the second week, the choral sessions (joined optionally by Symposium participants) and the musicianship classes continue in the mornings, while in the afternoons, participants will be able to attend the workshops/lectures of the Symposium.
The choral singing sessions will be special as participants of the Seminar, joined by the participants of the Symposium from 4 August, are going to prepare for the performance of Kodály’s Te Deum – conducted by Peter Erdei, the former founding director of the Institute – together with the Kecskemét Symphony Orchestra led by Huba Hollókői as part of the Kodály Music Festival on 8 August, 2025, the Closing Event of all events.
2025 is also an anniversary year, the 150th, for the Liszt Academy – our mother institution since 2005 – and to celebrate this, the Budavári Te Deum will also be performed in the Grand Hall of the Academy in Budapest on 7 August. (Transportation for participants will be provided.)
Spread the word! Encourage friends, students and colleagues to come and join us in celebrating, music making, strengthening professional relationships, making friendships and, in one word, creating memorable experiences!
The building of the Liszt Academy’s Kecskemét institution was modernized and outfitted with additional classrooms and state-of-the-art educational technology during an extensive, multi-year reconstruction.
Dr. Csaba Kutnyánszky, Vice President of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, recalled that in the fifty years since the founding of the Kodály Institute, nearly 2,000 students from almost 60 countries have attended courses there, and around 5,000 music educators have participated in summer seminars at the institution. The institute's mission is to promote the Kodály legacy internationally, to adapt Kodály's educational principles globally, and to serve as a methodological knowledge center for Hungarian music teachers. He emphasized that, perhaps more than ever, Hungarian music educators need professional support in today’s changing world and altered social environment, especially in light of the radically changed learning attitudes of children.
22 Jul – 2 Aug, Kecskemét, Hungary
The International Kodály Seminar has invited hundreds of musicians from all over the world to Zoltán Kodály’s birthplace, Kecskemét since its beginnings in 1970, when Mrs Sarolta Kodály organised the first Seminar.
In the summer of 2024 the 33rd International Kodály Seminar will take place in Kecskemét from 22 July to 2 August.
The Course in Music Education offers the usual activities: choral singing, musicianship training, choral conducting classes and interesting workshops from primary school to choral work, folk music and tertiary level education.
While the Piano Pedagogy Course awaits those who would like to work on Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos with Anikó Novák.
More information and registration available till mid-June at https://kodalyseminar.hu.
WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING OLD AND NEW SEMINAR PARTICIPANTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL TOWN OF KECSKEMÉT THIS SUMMER!
The Erasmus+ cooperation partnership for online music education initiated by the Kodály Institute of the Liszt Academy has received an award for excellence from the Tempus Public Foundation.
Only one such prize is awarded per year in each sector in one category, and the award ceremony will take place at the international Erasmus+ conference in Budapest on 28 May.
The other participants in the project, which was led by the former Director of the Institute, Dr László Norbert Nemes, and which ran from 2021 to 2023 under the acronym PRESTO (Practices and Resources for Equipping Schools to Teach Music Online), were Caprice Oy (Helsinki, Finland), Dublin City University (Dublin, Ireland), the National Youth Choir of Scotland (Glasgow, Scotland, UK) and Sing Ireland (Limerick, Ireland). The collaboration has produced over 750 different educational materials, including lectures, instructional videos, methodological manuals and sound files.
Commenting on the Tempus Award for Excellence, Judit Rajk, Director of the Kodály Institute, said: "It is a great pleasure not only for the Kodály Institute, but also for the entire community of the Liszt Academy that our PRESTO programme has received such high recognition. Although the programme ended in 2023, the classroom, choral and instrumental materials it produced are available on our website, free of charge to all on the kodalyhub.com/presto portal". She added that it was particularly gratifying to receive this award from an independent professional body. "It also demonstrates that we carry out high-quality work at our university, maintain broad-ranging international relations, and that the work of our students and teachers, and Hungarian music education in general are recognised around the world. The names of Liszt and Kodály, without forgetting the other great predecessors, oblige us to continue their work and to make it even more colourful with the innovations of our time," she stressed.
As we reported earlier, PRESTO received a very high score in the peer review, 96 out of a possible 100 points, and was also awarded the International Good Practice rating by the judges.
Source: https://uni.lisztacademy.hu/news/presto-project-wins-another-award-125921
The Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music has made significant progress in the QS rankings by subject: with its 22nd place in the performing arts category, it is the world’s highest-ranked Hungarian university.
The latest edition of one of the best-known higher education rankings, the UK's Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject 2024, compares almost 1,600 universities worldwide in 55 individual subjects across five broad subject areas.
The Liszt Academy of Music has made a huge leap forward in the long-established Performing Arts category. From last year's place in the 51-100 range, it has now come 22nd, making it the best of all Hungary’s universities: no other Hungarian university has done so well in its own field of study.
Committee: Mary Place – Chairman (UK), Helga Dietrich (Hun),
Kelly Foster-Griffin (USA), Gail Godfrey [Aust), Mary Stouffer (Can)
Under the auspices of the International Kodály Society
The Committee is delighted to announce the seventh Presentation of the International Katalin Forrai Award.
Another precious country of the Kodály movement has reached a significant user count on the Kodály HUB, last week Ireland has hit 300. If you project this figure to the population data, Ireland arrives to the leading position worldwide in terms of HUB users per capita, thanks to the high number of teachers and musicians influenced by the Kodály-conceptand, the institutions in Ireland actively promoting it, or taking part in international projects such as the PRESTO.
We are happy to announce that the user count in Australia has reached 300, this reflects Australia's leading position in the East-Asia and Pacific region in terms of the promotion of the Kodály-inspired music education principles.
We are delighted to announce that the 100th user from Portugal has registered to the KodalyHUB, Ana Rita, a Lisbon-based music teacher. We wish her success in using the Kodály concept in her teaching.
