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The applause is what I remember these days—not just that they clapped, but how they clapped: a roaring, rhythmic unison that told me we were a long way from Minnesota.

It was August 1990, and the Dale Warland Singers represented North America at the second World Choral Symposium in Stockholm. I was in the baritone section. Ten months before, the Berlin Wall had toppled. Two days before, Iraq invaded Kuwait and George Bush Sr. said, "This will not stand;" a few hours before, a blond, cherry-cheeked hotel clerk told me in a lilting Swedish accent that he hoped the Americans would just take care of this whole mess the world was in.

The Berlin Wall may have fallen, but the Soviet Union was still more or less intact and the Cold War still had a chill to it. So eyebrows were raised in Stockholm as the Dale Warland Singers were scheduled to perform that night in the same concert as the Moscow Chamber Choir.

Veterans of the World Choral Symposium describe these triennial events as the Olympics of song. That's fairly apt: Every choir represents the best from its country. But there is no competition at the symposium, no gold medals or award ceremony. If you're there, you're good. The honor is in the invitation. OK, forget that. Competition at the symposium is intense and unspoken. You want to be the choir they talk about back home when it's all over—especially when the choir singing right after you is from Russia. The Olympics analogy also fits because singers sometimes find a higher performance gear on a worldwide stage, surprising even themselves. So it was with us in Stockholm. We blew their doors off. No one knew a choir from the United States could sound that good, that polished, that powerful. The applause rose like a wave and hit us onstage, then broke into the rhythmic unison that greets an Olympic hockey team on the medal stand. Applause felt in the chest more than the ear. But never in America, never for choral music.

It shouldn¹t have surprised me. One would be hard-pressed to identify an epicenter of the choral universe, but northern Europe is a pretty good bet. The Swedish Radio Choir is routinely judged among the world¹s finest, the Danish Radio Choir not far behind. Britain and Germany can make a good claim to being the cradles of the a cappella singing we hear in American churches, school programs, and concert halls. And little Estonia—on the Baltic shore lies a nation roughly the size of the Twin Cities metro area, home to four professional choirs and massive summer gatherings where up to 10,000 Estonians flock to a specially built stadium, just to sing together.

So, no, the applause that night in Stockholm shouldn¹t have suprised me. Still, that roaring reaction is usually reserved for athletes—it was a shock. We left the stage feeling prouder than ever before. But the applause kept going. And going. We could hear it through the heavy stage door. We stood in the wings and didn't quite know what to do. We'd sung our program and that was that. The Russians were waiting to go on. But the audience wanted more. Should we go out and sing them something, anything? Would that snub the singers from Moscow? While the applause continued, there was a flurry of musical-diplomatic conversation back stage.

In the end, Dale Warland went out for several solo bows, then gave way to the next choir. And we became the audience for the Russians, sneaking into some spare seats in the back of the otherwise sold-out hall. It was astounding.

Listening to them, we wondered how their basses could sing so low, how their altos could produce that melted-butter sound, and marveled at the sheer voltage of their sopranos. When they finished, we stood and clapped in rhythm and shouted for them to come back and sing some more.

It was a scene repeated over several nights of that symposium. People clapping in unison and shouting their joy at how a choir can sing.

Celebrating beyond politics or competition the power of the human voice.

Brian Newhouse is the host-producer of Minnesota Public Radio¹s broadcasts of the Minnesota Orchestra.