Every three years, Missoula's International Choral Festival brings choirs from all over the world to perform for a week in July in this scenic Rocky Mountain town. Choirs from Austria, Botswana, China, Cuba, Denmark, Spain, and the United States participated in 2000. William McGlaughlin explained that his composition Walt Whitman's Dream "...would allow the audience to feel the power of the human voice to bridge over language and culture." Conducted by McGlaughlin at the festival finale, the 700 singers from across the world joined together with the Missoula Symphony Orchestra and sang to an audience of 6,000.