Choir! Choir! Choir! videos take practice, practice, practice
Ontario pop collective Choir! Choir! Choir! is sinking its musical hooks into the masses
With Choir! Choir! Choir! rehearsals almost ready to begin, the excitement among the pop collective’s members is rising.
About 150 people have squeezed into the backroom of Clinton’s Tavern, a bar in Toronto, on a recent chilly night. They’re about to sing Elton John’s Tiny Dancer, and many are whispering the 1970s classic under their breath, reading a lyric sheet they were handed with their $5 admission at the door.
Tonight’s performance could be huge — but it’s not going to be easy. In under three hours, they’ll learn how to perform John’s six-minute song in harmony, under the guidance of Choir! Choir! Choir! founders Nobu Adilman and Daveed Goldman.
Once it’s ready, the amateur singers will launch into a final performance uploaded to YouTube. It might even become their latest viral video.
The experience would’ve been unimaginable eight years ago when the creators of Choir! Choir! Choir! began drop-in sessions at a Toronto real estate office. But their simple idea has grown into a cultural movement.
Whether it was tributes to the late musicians David Bowie, Prince and Gord Downie, or the recent collaboration with Rick Astley on Never Gonna Give You Up, each video showcases a sea of anonymous strangers living out their jukebox glory.
Yet there’s a mystery as to why Choir! Choir! Choir! keeps getting bigger.
“I love that there’s so much mystique around what is, at its core, probably one of the most simple things,” says Adilman, 46.
“People have been doing this for hundreds of years. We’ve just packaged it up in a different way.”
This year, the choir drew some of their biggest names yet, including musician David Byrne.
The creators have more ambitious plans, including a tour where they’ll use ABBA songs to recruit local choirs for shows in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa and other cities.
None of this seemed possible in 2008 when Adilman, a one-time CBC host, was stewing in an artistic funk at his Toronto home.
He’d just moved back from Halifax, a place where the arts community had welcomed him with open arms, and was having trouble finding his place in Toronto’s creative world.
With spare time on his hands, he agreed to host a small choir for a friend’s birthday party. It was there he became acquainted with Goldman, who joined him in leading the group in a cover of Pilot’s 1974 pop hit Magic. The night was a success, and Adilman and Goldman became fast friends.
With Goldman working days at a Toronto brunch hot spot, he wasn’t in any rush to launch a singing career, but he couldn’t stop thinking about that night. Two years later, the two men created a Facebook event titled Choir! Choir! Choir! — a filler title they deemed a beckoning call to prospective singers. Word got around fast.
On the first night in February 2011, the duo gathered 25 people inside the Bosley Real Estate office. A photographer at a Toronto weekly snapped photos of the event, billing it a “rogue choir practice,” which drew more interest.
“We had so much fun that we told our friends we’d do it again sometime — and everyone was like, ‘Tomorrow, let’s do it tomorrow,”’ Adilman remembers.
“And from that moment it was every Tuesday, every single week.”
Eventually, a second weekly session was added.
Letters began to pile up from choir members. Adilman remembers the first one he received, written by a woman whose husband died from an illness.
She described grieving mostly in isolation with her son before deciding to attend one of the sessions in hopes of reconnecting with a community.
Other artists started to hear about Choir! Choir! Choir!, building momentum. Pop duo Tegan and Sara asked them to perform at the 2013 Polaris Music Prize and later the Juno Awards.
Posthumous tributes such as Bowie’s Space Oddity at Carnegie Hall have given the choir a reputation in some circles as the pallbearers of pop, a label the founders staunchly reject. It’s all part of a larger project, Adilman insists.
One of those tributes is happening this night with Tiny Dancer, although it’s not going smoothly.
“Blue jean baby, L.A. lady,” Goldman sings as he strums the guitar. He pauses to listen to the choir sing it back, and winces as they linger too long on some of the words.
When the choir breaks around the 90-minute mark, Goldman says they’re making progress, but he’s not completely satisfied.
Longtime participant Jane Mundell has witnessed her share of friendly clashes between the choir and their masters. She’s been coming for three years, and remembers one night when Goldman pushed the low harmony section to the brink. They turned their backs to him in a sign of protest.
“It was as if they were on strike for how they were being treated,” the Toronto teacher says with a laugh.
“Some came back with shirts the next week that said ‘We the lows,’ as a show of solidarity.”
Those conflicts are all in good fun, she says. They also weed out the softies.
Another challenge with being so popular is choosing songs for the crowd. Recently, they questioned whether Backstreet Boys’ Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) could work as a harmony. It did.
However, The Eagles’ Take it Easy was a disaster.
With Tiny Dancer, once the kinks are worked out, the performance looks like a winner.
A week later, the clip is on YouTube. Some people will share it with friends, spreading the Choir! Choir! Choir! gospel to prospective newcomers.
And before long, another generation of its members will be born.