The International Viola Society (IVS) is the umbrella organization that governs and supports existing and future national and regional organized groups or “National Sections” of violists. The IVS is a non-profit organization that promotes and supports activities that serve the common good for all friends of the viola. More than 20 countries worldwide already have active national viola societies. For more information: http://www.internationalviolasociety.com.
The Dutch Viola Society (DVS) is a fully recognised member section of the IVS since 2013, striving to continue and expand the vision and mission of the IVS in the Netherlands. A small percentage of the DVS revenues are passed on to the IVS to support the world-wide cooperation among Viola Societies.
The DVS plays an active role in the international viola community by attending the International Viola Congresses (IVC) and contributing to their programmes with performances, commissioned compositions and lectures. Furthermore, in 2018 the DVS hosted the 45th IVC in Rotterdam!
On the summary pages linked below, you can read about past and future planned IVC’s, and the DVS role in them:
41st IVC, 2013: Krakow, Poland
42nd IVC, 2014: Porto, Portugal
43rd IVC, 2016: Cremona, Italy
44th IVC, 2017: Wellington, New Zealand
45th IVC, 2018: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
46th IVC, 2019: Poznan, Poland
47th IVC, 2022: Columbus, Georgia (USA)
48th IVC, 2023: Salaya, Thailand
49th IVC, 2024: Campinas, Brazil
Next to the (more or less) annual congresses, the IVC recently have expanded their activities to host an online international viola competition, as well as monthly live webcasts (see the IVS YouTube channel here) with viola-related programmes contributed by member countries.
Last but not least, the IVS publishes a (semi-) monthly IVS Newsletter. We definitely recommend that you subscribe to this fantastic resource (using the dedicated Subscribe button on the IVS home page), it’s a great way to stay informed of what’s happening around the viola world! To get an idea, you can download the latest IVS newsletter (May 2024) here.