Latest / Midlife Choirsis / Jacqueline Larsen: A Whole Lotta Soul and a Whole Lotta Song

Transcript

Jacqueline Larsen: A Whole Lotta Soul and a Whole Lotta Song · Midlife Choirsis

0:13
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Midlife Choirsis, community singing in all its glory.
0:17
Speaker 1: My name is Kerrie Polkinghorne and it's great to have you with me on the journey today.
0:21
Speaker 1: I'm going to be talking to Jacqueline Larsen.
0:24
Speaker 1: Jacq founded Soul Song Choirs back in 2010 when she lived in Cairns, which is in Queensland, Australia.
0:31
Speaker 1: The choir soon expanded and became a network of choirs across the country, with a host of directors and exciting performance experiences.
0:39
Speaker 1: Today Jacq runs the day-to-day operations of all of the choirs with support from Nicky Marsh, as well as selecting and producing all of the repertoire and teaching materials with support from her son Daniel, and she manages the vision and strategic direction of the choirs.
0:54
Speaker 1: Jacq works all the time but loves what she does, and is forever grateful for the opportunity to lead hundreds of people in Song each week.
1:02
Speaker 1: Well, here we are in Brisbane, Queensland, and I am talking to Jacq Larsen.
1:06
Speaker 1: Welcome, Jacq.
1:07
Speaker 2: How are you, Kerrie?
1:08
Speaker 2: Welcome to Brisbane.
1:09
Speaker 2: Now it's Jacq and not Jackie, is that correct?
1:11
Speaker 2: I don't mind Jacqueline, but I don't like Jackie.
1:13
Speaker 2: And if I introduce myself as Jacqueline, people automatically call me Jackie.
1:17
Speaker 2: So I just go straight in with Jacq and they go, Oh.
1:19
Speaker 2: Is that an Aussie thing?
1:20
Speaker 2: No, it's uh definitely it.
1:21
Speaker 2: I come from Watfud.
1:22
Speaker 2: So there's a place in the UK, just outside London.
1:24
Speaker 2: It's Hertfordshire, home county, it's very posh, but there's a certain half of Watfud that's not so posh.
1:29
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm Jack eh from Watfud.
1:31
Speaker 2: I was Jackie until about 18 and then became Jacq.
1:34
Speaker 2: I hated Jacq because I saw it as J-A-C-K, and then someone spelt it J-A-Q, and I went, oh, that's cool.
1:41
Speaker 1: It's a bit French, even.
1:43
Speaker 2: Well, Jacques Jacqueline Marie is actually my name.
1:45
Speaker 2: No reason at all.
1:46
Speaker 2: There you go.
1:46
Speaker 2: There's no French connection.
1:48
Speaker 1: So tell us a bit about yourself.
1:49
Speaker 1: Obviously, you've come from the UK.
1:51
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about your background, a little bit where you came to music and choir singing, we'll get to that as well.
1:57
Speaker 2: I started music when I was about two and a half.
2:00
Speaker 2: My mum introduced me to what got me playing the violin via Suzuki method.
2:03
Speaker 2: So there's never been a time when I couldn't read music.
2:06
Speaker 2: And it was a really good program because you spend ages learning about rhythms and music and how to hold a violin.
2:10
Speaker 2: Before you even got one, you had a tissue box and a ruler and a garden cane, and you would learn about positions and rhythms, and you do clapping and reading all this stuff before you eventually went and got your first violin.
2:20
Speaker 2: So I played the violin until I was about 12 or so, when being an obnoxious teenager, I didn't practice.
2:24
Speaker 2: So mum said, Well, if you're not going to practice, you give up.
2:26
Speaker 2: That's always my biggest regret that I can't play in an orchestra now.
2:29
Speaker 2: I mean, frankly, I don't have time, but for a while I could went.
2:32
Speaker 2: It'd be nice to walk into an orchestra somewhere.
2:34
Speaker 2: And then singing just kind of started creeping in.
2:37
Speaker 2: I'd always love to sing.
2:38
Speaker 2: I used to spend hours in this dream.
2:41
Speaker 2: I was on the swing in the back garden, and we were onto a busy sort of road, and I would sit on the gar the swing in the garden and sing.
2:47
Speaker 2: And I had one day someone was going to knock on the door and go, just heard this amazing voice from the garden, and I would be a famous star.
2:54
Speaker 2: Didn't happen.
2:55
Speaker 1: Didn't happen.
2:56
Speaker 2: I kept singing on the swing.
2:57
Speaker 1: Well, and you can keep singing on the singing on the swing as well.
3:00
Speaker 1: You never know.
3:01
Speaker 2: Singing and swinging, yeah.
3:02
Speaker 2: So um that singing came in, yeah, gradually, and I started having singing lessons and stuff and did all the school musicals and that kind of thing.
3:10
Speaker 2: And I did score choirs, but they were not particularly inspiring or anything until I got to university.
3:14
Speaker 2: So I headed up to Edinburgh.
3:16
Speaker 2: English person goes to Scotland to study English literature, makes a super amount of sense.
3:20
Speaker 2: And year one, I got involved with the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, which is such a ridiculous thing for me to have done because it's really not my bag.
3:28
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that right now.
3:30
Speaker 2: No.
3:30
Speaker 2: Well, the musical society were doing Chicago or Cabaret.
3:33
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, I'm not really sure, a bit raunchy, not sure.
3:36
Speaker 2: And I went down the Gilbert and Sullivan path, and that definitely didn't float my boat for long.
3:40
Speaker 2: But then by the end of the first year, friends of friends say, Oh, we're starting this rock gospel choir.
3:46
Speaker 2: You should come along.
3:47
Speaker 2: So they basically kind of tapped me on the shoulder.
3:49
Speaker 2: I didn't realise it at the time, I'm not really sure how they knew about me.
3:52
Speaker 2: Tapped me on the shoulder.
3:54
Speaker 2: I got involved in me being me very quickly.
3:56
Speaker 2: I was arranging and teaching very quickly, was running it and then running the national network of them.
4:01
Speaker 2: And it was a hundred students.
4:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, we literally just did it ourselves.
4:04
Speaker 2: And looking back, I don't know, we organized these big concerts in big venues in Edinburgh.
4:08
Speaker 2: No idea how we did it.
4:10
Speaker 2: Like the second year, I got a laptop and had word process.
4:12
Speaker 2: I was like one of the only people with a laptop and comics on, and you could use clip art to make a poster.
4:17
Speaker 2: But we did these really big, yeah, really good concerts.
4:19
Speaker 2: So that was called Revelation.
4:21
Speaker 2: And it was a run run by a group of Christians, but not a Christian, no, no, yeah, a non-denominational choir, but had again good values set out, and we sang pop rock music in a gospel style.
4:33
Speaker 2: So white Scottish people singing in a gospel style.
4:36
Speaker 2: We really couldn't call it a gospel choir, I was never gonna pull it off.
4:39
Speaker 2: But that was my experience standing and directing a hundred people, didn't know what I was doing, but made up and I went, This is this is good.
4:45
Speaker 2: I like this, this is where I feel good, and that kind of you know changed probably the whole trajectory of my social time at university and stuff.
4:52
Speaker 2: We'd organise camps and weekends away and that sort of thing.
4:55
Speaker 1: So you finished up uni.
4:56
Speaker 1: What did you do after that?
4:57
Speaker 2: Uh moved back down to London and started work.
4:59
Speaker 2: And looking back, this is the only period of my life where there wasn't any singing on choir.
5:02
Speaker 2: It was a couple of years in London where I was just working all the time.
5:05
Speaker 2: And it really wasn't until I moved to Australia that I got singing again.
5:08
Speaker 2: So met my husband where we were working, he's Australian.
5:10
Speaker 2: Fast forward, moved out, we ended up in Perth.
5:13
Speaker 2: Although he's from North Queensland.
5:14
Speaker 2: We moved to Perth.
5:16
Speaker 2: And I went, okay, I need to, yeah, need to meet some people.
5:18
Speaker 2: Let's get singing.
5:19
Speaker 2: So I still can't quite remember how it happened, but got into barbershop.
5:23
Speaker 2: That's a whole nother sector of singing.
5:26
Speaker 2: I say to people, it's that's the Olympic sport of singing.
5:28
Speaker 2: I have never learned so much about ensemble singing in my life as I learnt there.
5:33
Speaker 2: But barbershop, I couldn't close my eyes and love the music.
5:37
Speaker 2: Barbershop's all about forward momentum.
5:39
Speaker 2: There's no instruments, there, all of the arrangements are sung by the voices.
5:42
Speaker 2: So there's always a part singing something in their particular style, and they have gorgeous chords, and it's really tough singing.
5:49
Speaker 2: But I found I would always want to pause and give listeners a chance to catch up with the story, and they're very competitive.
5:55
Speaker 2: And that again, there's not a problem with that.
5:57
Speaker 2: That's just you know, their sector in which barbershop operates.
6:00
Speaker 2: So I did that for probably about a year as a quartet and in the chorus, um, because they're not choirs.
6:06
Speaker 2: Barbershops have choruses very important.
6:09
Speaker 2: And I was still working in events over in Perth, and my boss at the time, part of the network that he had going on, one of the wives was singing in a little group on a Thursday morning.
6:19
Speaker 2: So he was like, just go and sing with them.
6:21
Speaker 2: So I used to take Thursday morning off.
6:22
Speaker 2: He didn't care, he I worked all the time, so he didn't care when I was in the office or not, and it was good for my mental health and everyone else's around me if I was singing again.
6:30
Speaker 2: So joined this little group called Take Note.
6:32
Speaker 2: There were about 15 women, and they called it Therapy Thursday, and they were just going singing some basic kind of little pop arrangements.
6:38
Speaker 2: There was a director there, and again, within a year or so, I guess it was directing it.
6:45
Speaker 2: Just as a pattern.
6:46
Speaker 1: So if you could rock up to someone else's choir, they should really look out.
6:49
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, be be afraid, be very afraid.
6:52
Speaker 2: But I have been in someone else's choir and didn't take it over, so it's not all the time.
6:56
Speaker 2: So then, yeah, directed them.
6:58
Speaker 2: That was lovely again, just a small group, and I was having babies and stuff at the time, so they'd crawl around on the floor while we were having rehearsals and stuff.
7:04
Speaker 2: So that was lovely, and then we left Perth and moved to Cairns to get the kids back closer to family, and I did a show with the Choral Society there.
7:12
Speaker 2: Uh, we did Miss Saigon.
7:14
Speaker 2: Again, it was great, but the choral society wasn't gonna be my place.
7:18
Speaker 2: A few of us coming out of that formed a performing arts group, which we did a couple of theatre restaurants and things through, but that wasn't gonna go for a while.
7:25
Speaker 2: So I thought, well, let's just see if I can start a choir.
7:27
Speaker 2: If I can get 15 - 20 people who want to sing together each week, see how we go.
7:32
Speaker 2: Come up with a name, and the name was instant, didn't even think about it.
7:35
Speaker 2: Somehow it was in there before I'd even given it a thought.
7:37
Speaker 2: And Soul Song 17th of August 2010, I'd hired a church and we used the back area of a church, and 20 people were our first rehearsal.
7:46
Speaker 2: And for the first six months, about 15 people each week turned up.
7:50
Speaker 2: And then one day in the February, people just kept walking through the door and they kept coming and kept coming, and we ran out of chairs.
7:55
Speaker 1: Wow.
7:56
Speaker 2: We suddenly had about 40 people, and that was yeah, that was in.
7:59
Speaker 2: I used to come to a Tuesday afternoon, I'd go, Oh, crikey, we need to sing something tonight.
8:04
Speaker 2: And I'd work, pick a Song, and write down some lyrics and print them out.
8:07
Speaker 2: And it's very different to the system now.
8:10
Speaker 1: Do you remember your first performance?
8:12
Speaker 2: Yes.
8:13
Speaker 2: Um, it was at the church we rehearsed, they had a community event called The Melting Pot.
8:17
Speaker 2: We stood by that point, we would had probably 30, 35 of us, and we had a guitarist who played, and I think it was guitarist and backing tracks.
8:25
Speaker 2: I got a little video of it, but we're standing completely in the dark.
8:27
Speaker 2: It was standing under a like a veranda, but there's no lighting.
8:31
Speaker 2: We're in the dark.
8:31
Speaker 2: I've learned learned a lot coming back, but it was good.
8:34
Speaker 2: And then our first big sort of concert of our own was just over a year in, and we had about 45 people in that.
8:40
Speaker 1: So you started in Cairns.
8:43
Speaker 1: When did it expand beyond Cairns?
8:46
Speaker 2: So I moved down to Brisbane in 2017 for my eldest child to start school.
8:50
Speaker 2: So there were some limitations around the schools in Cairns that weren't gonna be quite right for him.
8:54
Speaker 2: So we moved down to Brisbane, and that's when I joined a QPAC Choir for six months and didn't take it over.
8:59
Speaker 2: Tim Sherlock, who's a fabulous um director up here, was running that one.
9:04
Speaker 2: That was a big 150-voice choir, which is great because I could sit at the back, sing quite loudly, be helpful to the others and do that.
9:11
Speaker 2: So that lasted for about six months.
9:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I didn't take it over.
9:15
Speaker 2: Go me.
9:16
Speaker 2: I did, of course, introduce maybe the concept of learning tracks, which they didn't before.
9:20
Speaker 2: So I recorded learning tracks for some of the songs we were doing, and Tim came around to mine and recorded the male ones.
9:25
Speaker 2: And I still don't think he does them now, but he did that yeah.
9:29
Speaker 2: And I also joined a small uh vocal group for me again singing called Inversion at the time.
9:36
Speaker 2: So they were singing a lot of jazz and mix of a cappella and backing tracks, jazz and pop and bits and pieces.
9:42
Speaker 2: That was 2017, got almost to the end of 2018, and I was like probably itching again to get directing.
9:48
Speaker 2: So I think, okay, well, why don't we start a Soul Song down here?
9:50
Speaker 2: One of the hardest decisions about leaving Cairns was what do I do with the choir?
9:54
Speaker 2: Most sane, regular people would have just gone, I'm really sorry, I'm leaving.
9:58
Speaker 2: It was great.
9:59
Speaker 2: We had a great six years, you know.
10:01
Speaker 2: But there were too many people I knew that were in the choir who were living, yeah, who whose lives had changed, and you know what it's like running choirs.
10:08
Speaker 2: You see people build these communities, and there were people whose lives had changed because that choir existed.
10:13
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying they wouldn't have coped without us, but it would have left a big hole.
10:16
Speaker 2: One of the members who'd been in the choir and I'd been singing in a separate little group with she actually took over directing, so I was still going to run it from here.
10:23
Speaker 2: She took over the choice of music and directing the music, and I did the sort of bigger admin around memberships, and the idea was to be still going up every sort of month or so, checking in, keeping them all that cultural side going.
10:34
Speaker 2: Some personal stuff meant that by about halfway through the year I wasn't able to get up much.
10:38
Speaker 2: So she kept that all going, but at the end of the year she said I can't continue.
10:42
Speaker 2: But this was the end of November, and we were like, Oh, that gives like a month before we have to know what's happening yet next year.
10:50
Speaker 2: What are we gonna do?
10:51
Speaker 2: So we'd been building up some section leaders at that point.
10:54
Speaker 2: So I scrabbled an emergency meeting.
10:56
Speaker 2: I was up there for a performance and scrabble an emergency meeting together and said, Look, we fold or you guys step up.
11:02
Speaker 2: So what we did for the next
11:03
Speaker 1: No pressure.
11:04
Speaker 2: No pressure for the next year.
11:06
Speaker 2: There were seven of them, and we had a venue where we had separate rooms when it we were very lucky at the time.
11:11
Speaker 2: So what they did was two weeks out of three, they would split up into the separate rooms, learn the material on their own, so just the sopranos, just the altos, then they'd bring it back together and have a sing-through, and then I would come up every three weeks and really, you know, direct it and work on the nuancing and stuff.
11:26
Speaker 1: Which would have been great for you because you get to do the fun stuff.
11:29
Speaker 2: Exactly.
11:30
Speaker 2: But it was also great that they've never been so tight because you know what it's like when you're waiting for another part to learn theirs, or you're waiting for the baritones to have forgotten theirs again.
11:37
Speaker 2: Oops, did I say that out loud?
11:38
Speaker 2: Sorry, baritones.
11:40
Speaker 2: It's always the baritones that get picked on.
11:42
Speaker 2: So they were really tight with their repertoire because there was no time wasting.
11:45
Speaker 2: So they got you know really, really good.
11:47
Speaker 2: Over time, a few of the section leaders there got more and more confident in being able to direct, so I didn't need to go up every three weeks.
11:53
Speaker 2: They could actually pull them together.
11:54
Speaker 2: So it was a very natural evolution, and they direct very much in my style because they didn't have any education in this either.
12:00
Speaker 2: They learned to direct watching me, so they direct like me, which kept that kind of vibe going as well.
12:06
Speaker 2: And that's still going to the day.
12:07
Speaker 2: Three of those key ones are still there are three directors up there today, Sarah, Claire, and Rhiannon, and they're don't need me at all.
12:13
Speaker 2: So, in fact, they're about to do their very first big concert without me, first ever Big Cairns end of year concert without me.
12:19
Speaker 1: All right.
12:20
Speaker 2: They do not need me at all.
12:21
Speaker 2: They think they do, they don't.
12:22
Speaker 2: I thought, okay, maybe it's time for a Brisbane Soul Song So I'll test the water.
12:26
Speaker 2: So I put some Facebook stuff around and a few posters for the West End social singers.
12:31
Speaker 2: So I was living in West End at the time.
12:32
Speaker 2: For those that don't know Brisbane, West End is an inner city suburb, but it's very eclectic, very artsy, very kind of grungy out there.
12:40
Speaker 2: So it was really a good place to be starting it.
12:43
Speaker 2: And I did it as a Christmas project.
12:45
Speaker 2: So it's six weeks.
12:46
Speaker 2: Anyone would come and sing, six or eight weeks, I think.
12:48
Speaker 2: Come and sing some Christmas stuff, we'll perform at the end, and that was all it was going to be.
12:52
Speaker 2: And I was secretly sort of testing the water, seeing who's out there.
12:55
Speaker 2: Got about 25 people in, and then at the end said, Well, shall we continue?
12:59
Speaker 2: So Soul Song West End was born in the January of 2019.
13:03
Speaker 2: So they got going in the May.
13:05
Speaker 2: We brought some Cairns people down.
13:06
Speaker 2: Queensland Music Festival was doing a big choir thing.
13:09
Speaker 2: So a lot of the Cairns members down, and that was our first ever meeting of two Soul Songs in May 2018.
13:16
Speaker 1: What was that like when we met up with each other?
13:18
Speaker 2: Really good.
13:19
Speaker 2: Again, because I wasn't sure it was how different it was going to be.
13:22
Speaker 2: And one of my things was, yeah, will Soul Song here feel like Soul Song there?
13:26
Speaker 2: And it did, yeah, very quick.
13:27
Speaker 2: Again, because I was starting it, I guess it would, yeah, it would feel like that.
13:31
Speaker 2: Um, and would Soul Song and Cairns still feel like it?
13:34
Speaker 2: Well, again, because the people leading it had come up through the ranks, yes, it did feel so like still feel like Soul Song.
13:40
Speaker 2: So it was great.
13:40
Speaker 2: They had a we had a ball of a weekend.
13:42
Speaker 2: We're very good at partying at Soul Song.
13:44
Speaker 2: Come the start of 2020, we had Soul Song Cairns, Soul Song West End.
13:47
Speaker 2: And the idea was we were doing the same repertoire.
13:50
Speaker 2: So I'd established it, we'll just do exactly the same songs, and off we went.
13:54
Speaker 2: January, tick, February, tick.
13:58
Speaker 2: Then March happened.
14:00
Speaker 2: This was still my hobby bonus income sort of thing.
14:03
Speaker 2: I was still working full-time in events, doing some major events around the place.
14:07
Speaker 2: I was heading down to Victoria to Melbourne to do a big conference for about 600 people.
14:11
Speaker 2: I was flying on the Saturday.
14:13
Speaker 2: Some of our delegates had already gone in.
14:15
Speaker 2: And on the Friday, the Prime Minister stood up and cancelled all gatherings of over 500 people.
14:20
Speaker 2: So our conference was gone like that.
14:22
Speaker 2: And through the next day or two, the phone was just like one event, all my work for the year.
14:26
Speaker 1: Wow.
14:27
Speaker 2: Just gone.
14:28
Speaker 2: So I was freaking out financially.
14:31
Speaker 2: And I don't even remember at the beginning of COVID in Australia, they were talking about you have to socially isolate.
14:37
Speaker 2: So for about five days to a week, they were saying everyone needs to socially isolate.
14:41
Speaker 2: But then all of the social workers and all of the psychologists go, you can't tell them to socially isolate.
14:46
Speaker 2: We need to socially distance.
14:48
Speaker 2: But that had already planted a seed.
14:50
Speaker 2: Again, I know so many of my members live for their Tuesday rehearsals up in Cairns or Thursday rehearsals in Brisbane.
14:56
Speaker 2: What are they going to do without them?
14:58
Speaker 2: And what am I going to do for money?
14:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was literally going, do I go and work at Woolworths?
15:01
Speaker 2: Because I needed money.
15:03
Speaker 2: And then I went, No, we can we can do something with that.
15:06
Speaker 2: So within about three days, a viral choir was born.
15:09
Speaker 1: So this viral choir, for those people listening, when Adelaide was under lockdown, I remember thinking, I'm bored, you know, within one day, I'm bored.
15:20
Speaker 1: And I went and looked at what choirs were around.
15:23
Speaker 1: Well, there weren't any, except this one called Soul Song.
15:26
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, cool.
15:27
Speaker 1: And it was so fast.
15:28
Speaker 1: You were like on the ball very quick.
15:30
Speaker 1: So I actually joined your first rehearsals and recorded, I think, two songs.
15:36
Speaker 1: Yep.
15:37
Speaker 2: Yep.
15:37
Speaker 1: And that's where I actually came across you.
15:39
Speaker 2: Exactly.
15:40
Speaker 1: So tell us about that.
15:41
Speaker 2: So it was born, yeah, born out of necessity.
15:43
Speaker 2: So I got a lot of technical background and everything else.
15:45
Speaker 2: So I could build, I can do my own websites, I can get all of that done.
15:48
Speaker 2: So I was able to move, do my own branding and design.
15:50
Speaker 2: So I moved really quickly.
15:51
Speaker 1: And you had the time.
15:52
Speaker 2: Yeah.
15:52
Speaker 2: I had all the time in the world.
15:55
Speaker 2: So I went, well, if I'm going to do this for my choirs, I may as well open it for everybody.
15:59
Speaker 2: My whole thing about doing it was about building community because they were saying that we needed to socially isolate and then they changed it to socially distance.
16:05
Speaker 2: Well, how we need community connection.
16:06
Speaker 2: But if time like this, more than anything, we need connection.
16:09
Speaker 2: Can I build a community, a connected community, whose core being is being together and singing, and we can't do that again.
16:18
Speaker 2: So I devised a program.
16:20
Speaker 2: I devised a month-long program because that's what we thought it would be.
16:24
Speaker 2: So there was something on every single day.
16:25
Speaker 2: We had two rehearsals of 90 minutes a week, and then we had um something else every day, some online chat or uh activity or like videos to watch or bits and pieces.
16:34
Speaker 2: I would do some technical tutorials, something to keep people busy.
16:37
Speaker 2: It was a whole $5 or $10 a week, and you got something to do every single day.
16:42
Speaker 2: We got about 200 singers quite quickly from all over the place, mainly in Australia, but from all over the place.
16:47
Speaker 2: Our first rehearsal, we had some live singers in the room because we still could at that point.
16:51
Speaker 2: Yes.
16:52
Speaker 2: We quickly realized that really didn't work because they're all yabbering and carrying on.
16:55
Speaker 2: It was too noisy and everything else.
16:57
Speaker 2: So our model, whereas most choir directors just went on Zoom and had their singers on Zoom and bashed notes and tried to keep people going, we moved to a webinar thing.
17:06
Speaker 2: So I couldn't, we couldn't see anyone.
17:07
Speaker 2: So what we had was myself, Daniel, who was 14 at the time, and Anthony, one of our baritones.
17:13
Speaker 2: So Daniel was singing Alto Alto, Anthony, one of our baritones.
17:16
Speaker 2: At all times, he was still allowed to our house under whenever the regulations change.
17:21
Speaker 2: He was always allowed in.
17:22
Speaker 2: So we had the three of us so people could hear the three parts being sung, and we were doing it webinar.
17:27
Speaker 2: So we couldn't see, because if you watch people on Zoom, they could be having a great time, but they look bored as bad.
17:32
Speaker 2: I don't know if I can say that.
17:33
Speaker 2: And that reflects on you as the director trying to keep the energy going when they look like they're pulling teeth, but we couldn't see them.
17:40
Speaker 2: So we thought we were the most hilarious thing ever to have existed.
17:43
Speaker 2: So for 90 minutes, we just pratted around.
17:46
Speaker 2: We were really stupid.
17:47
Speaker 2: We learned some songs, they heard what it would sound like with the three parts, and then we'd always finish off with a karaoke Song where we'd be dancing stupidly at the end.
17:54
Speaker 2: Like we did some very stupid things, dress-ups and all kinds of stuff.
17:57
Speaker 2: And they're all commenting in, and we're responding to their comments and everything.
18:00
Speaker 2: So that worked really well.
18:01
Speaker 2: And we carried on with that webinar format for a long time.
18:04
Speaker 2: Only at the end of 2020 did we move to Zoom, and that was so we could see people, and I was like, oh, it's horrible seeing the people because they look bored.
18:11
Speaker 2: But that formula I think was different to what anyone else was doing, and I think that's why it was so successful because it had energy to it, rather than me just sitting there trying to bash some parts out on my own.
18:21
Speaker 2: So that was then born.
18:23
Speaker 2: At the end of 2020, we could start singing again, and we went in and we had our chairs, we had our broomsticks, and we're setting the chairs one and a half metres in every direction from the other chairs, and it was awful.
18:34
Speaker 2: And I thought in my head we would go to September 2020.
18:39
Speaker 2: Still very clear by that point we weren't.
18:41
Speaker 2: So we did a Christmas, an online Christmas album.
18:43
Speaker 2: Everyone was in recording the individual tracks and putting in a Song, and we published a Song every week, which was insane.
18:49
Speaker 2: A huge amount of looking back, like with 90 odds of the singers and stuff.
18:53
Speaker 1: How many do you think you've edited up to now?
18:54
Speaker 1: Are you still doing it?
18:56
Speaker 2: We're still doing it.
18:56
Speaker 2: I think we're on about 180 or something virtual choir videos now.
18:59
Speaker 2: I need to stop and count them on Monday.
19:01
Speaker 2: So we kept doing those, even though we got to start singing it in person, because people there were still enough people who really wanted to, but I thought it would die out.
19:09
Speaker 2: We came out of that and went, well, hold on, there's all these other people still singing online.
19:13
Speaker 2: So our model changed.
19:14
Speaker 2: So we still only had West End and Cairns, but I started live streaming my rehearsals.
19:19
Speaker 2: So from the rehearsal hall, I'd put the live stream on.
19:22
Speaker 2: And again, in different ways to other people, I put the singers at home up on the screen.
19:26
Speaker 2: So everyone in the room could see those on the screen.
19:28
Speaker 2: And I set the text so that those at home could see the singers in the room and see me.
19:32
Speaker 2: So it was all quite techy.
19:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.
19:34
Speaker 2: But again, it allowed that connection rather than just going, Oh, you're the secondary people on the screen.
19:39
Speaker 2: They were as important and everyone knew that.
19:41
Speaker 2: So six years on, Viral Choir is still going.
19:44
Speaker 2: I still live stream my rehearsals, and we get anywhere between five and twenty-five people on my rehearsals each week from all of our choirs.
19:52
Speaker 2: And that might be because they're unwell or because they're doing a second rehearsal for the week, or because they live in Melbourne and we don't have a choir in Melbourne yet.
19:57
Speaker 2: So all kinds of reasons for joining us online now.
20:00
Speaker 2: But that changed the whole model and the way we thought about it.
20:03
Speaker 2: And also meant I suddenly turned around and went, I'm a full-time choir.
20:07
Speaker 2: I would never have taken that leap.
20:09
Speaker 2: I would never have thought I could make a living out of full-time choir.
20:13
Speaker 2: But suddenly I turned around and there I was.
20:15
Speaker 2: So I started another choir in Brisbane, up in the north side of Brisbane, and started 2021.
20:21
Speaker 2: We're excited, ready to go, and then they brought a mask ban in.
20:24
Speaker 2: So our first ever rehearsal was in masks.
20:26
Speaker 1: Oh gosh.
20:27
Speaker 2: And then later that year, Balimba followed.
20:30
Speaker 2: So we suddenly had three Brisbane choirs and the Cairns choir.
20:32
Speaker 2: And that was going all quite nicely.
20:35
Speaker 2: But it was getting to the point where Soul Song Choirs was an unwieldy teenager.
20:38
Speaker 2: Like it was getting to be a business, but not quite enough to actually employ people to do the business side.
20:43
Speaker 2: So I'm spending more and more time dealing with the accountants and tax and work cover and all these awful things that I don't want to deal with.
20:50
Speaker 2: And I could do quite well if I put my mind to it, but I want to be in the creative space.
20:53
Speaker 2: So I thought, okay, well, I'm already writing a rehearsal plan for the guys up in Cairns.
20:57
Speaker 2: I've got all the resources here that we're using in Brisbane and Cairns.
21:00
Speaker 2: Again, we were still doing exactly the same songs.
21:02
Speaker 2: So people could travel.
21:02
Speaker 2: So our viral choir members would learn the songs in Sydney in their lounge room and fly up to Brisbane or Cairns and perform with us.
21:09
Speaker 2: Yes, so they knew the songs.
21:10
Speaker 2: It was amazing.
21:11
Speaker 2: The first time like we got together was just like crazy.
21:14
Speaker 2: And we'd started doing tours down to Festival of Voices and regional tours and things.
21:18
Speaker 2: So I went, hold on.
21:19
Speaker 2: If I'm already got the plan, why don't I just have more directors and more choirs?
21:23
Speaker 2: That gets me more income.
21:24
Speaker 2: I can farm off more of the business stuff and I can focus on the creative stuff, which is where I really want to be.
21:29
Speaker 2: So we went, let's just put an advert out and see whether anyone else wants to direct a Soul Song.
21:34
Speaker 2: We'll do the invoicing, the member management, the websites, the insurance, the venue booking, the licensing.
21:39
Speaker 2: Like the list goes on.
21:40
Speaker 2: We'll cover all of that and we'll be kind people to do the best job in the world.
21:44
Speaker 2: Learn a song at home, turn up, teach it to a bunch of people, and go home again, which is easily the best part of the job.
21:51
Speaker 2: Because being a choir director can be very isolating.
21:54
Speaker 2: Any choir directors listening will be nodding at this point, going, You're really isolated.
21:58
Speaker 2: You've got no one to give you relief.
21:59
Speaker 2: You want to take a week off, you just have to cancel rehearsals because how's gonna someone's gonna come in and take it?
22:04
Speaker 2: And there is so much you're a creative person, you're a musician, yet you need to understand insurance and licensing and venue hire and concert planning and ticketing and all of that stuff, which isn't gonna be every creative's forte.
22:15
Speaker 2: For a lot of people, they can't do that, and that's too much, and that would just stop them from running, yeah, running a group, and let alone producing learning tracks and video tutorials and all the rest of it.
22:23
Speaker 2: We kind of want, let's let's see if people want to do that.
22:25
Speaker 2: So we just put an ad out.
22:26
Speaker 2: We literally just put a nationwide ad.
22:28
Speaker 2: We didn't target anywhere particular.
22:30
Speaker 2: I had a few people respond, but one lady down in Adelaide came back very quickly.
22:34
Speaker 2: She already had her own choirs, but she's saying what she what we were doing is what she wanted to do and just didn't have the capacity for.
22:40
Speaker 2: So we went great.
22:41
Speaker 2: Didn't end up working out with her, unfortunately, because we were too different to what she and her choirs were used to, the pace was too different.
22:48
Speaker 2: But the amazing thing that came out of that, when we started working with her, she goes, Oh, I've got a young girl, Bri, who's been singing with me for ages.
22:55
Speaker 2: What about she do one out in Gawler, towards the Barossa?
22:59
Speaker 2: And I went, I hadn't thought about it, but okay, if you're prepared to sort of mentor, bring her up to speed.
23:04
Speaker 2: So we launched one in Gawler in the November 2024.
23:08
Speaker 2: I went over and did a launch for it, but it was the first choir that I hadn't started.
23:13
Speaker 1: That would have been nerve-wracking.
23:15
Speaker 2: It was very nerve-wracking because again, I was really concerned about the culture.
23:17
Speaker 2: Will it feel like Soul Song?
23:19
Speaker 2: How will it feel like Soul Song?
23:20
Speaker 2: Does it matter?
23:21
Speaker 2: So a lot of choirs, there's a network of choirs called Humming Song, very big in Sydney and Victoria.
23:27
Speaker 2: They're actually just arrived in Brisbane as well.
23:29
Speaker 2: They've got two choirs here.
23:30
Speaker 2: They're all female, different style of singing to us, probably a bit more serious and refined than we are, but most people are more serious and refined than we are.
23:38
Speaker 2: I was chatting to Anna Humstone, we've never met in person, but we had a phone call one day about something.
23:42
Speaker 2: And I was saying to her, I was worried about this kind of cultural thing.
23:45
Speaker 2: And she said she had been down that same route.
23:47
Speaker 2: But she goes, as long as people come into their rehearsal, their needs are met, they go home.
23:53
Speaker 2: They don't care if it feels the same as the rehearsal down the street.
23:56
Speaker 2: But for her, it didn't matter because they never went to the rehearsal down the street.
23:59
Speaker 2: But for ours, you could be a member of your particular Glenelg choir.
24:03
Speaker 2: Coming on holiday to Brisbane for a wedding or something, you can come to a Brisbane rehearsal because we're doing all the same stuff, all the same songs.
24:10
Speaker 2: So I do need them to feel like each other because people are moving around constantly.
24:15
Speaker 2: We've just got someone this week from Adelaide going up to our Cairns choir.
24:18
Speaker 2: She's on holiday in Cairns, she's going to the Cairns choir tomorrow night.
24:21
Speaker 2: So we do need there to be a consistency of culture.
24:24
Speaker 2: So I was really worried about that, but put some time into developing that and sharing that and communicating that.
24:29
Speaker 2: And away we went.
24:30
Speaker 2: So that started in the November, and then the two more started in Adelaide in the January.
24:36
Speaker 2: And then this year we added three more, so we're up to 17 plus viral choir makes 18.
24:42
Speaker 2: I'm at about 900, it fluctuates anywhere between seven and nine hundred members across all of those.
24:47
Speaker 1: Just the admin for 900 members.
24:49
Speaker 1: I can't imagine.
24:50
Speaker 2: A big thing that I'm finding is the emotional toll as well.
24:53
Speaker 2: Because of the way I am, I do encourage you know open communication and stuff.
24:57
Speaker 2: And my members will share with me the journeys that they're on, which could be health-related or family-related or work-related.
25:03
Speaker 2: And a lot of them are not in good places.
25:05
Speaker 2: Everyone has, you know, good times in life and bad times.
25:08
Speaker 2: That's a lot of people's stories that I'm carrying with me as I go.
25:12
Speaker 2: And it's a privilege to carry them, but it's also a lot.
25:14
Speaker 2: So going back a couple of years, you know, I have 180 singers on stage in my Brisbane concert.
25:18
Speaker 2: I know every single one of them by name.
25:20
Speaker 2: And that's just my commitment to doing that.
25:22
Speaker 2: So the thought that I go into different rooms and don't know people was really unnerving.
25:27
Speaker 2: We try and combat that by I'm going down and doing the camps in each area so I get time to get to know them.
25:32
Speaker 2: I'm getting over that idea of not needing to know everyone, but it does, it feels really strange that they could be my members and I could walk past them in the street and not know.
25:39
Speaker 2: As long as they adore their musical director and their admin team helps them out and creates the culture, then is that enough?
25:46
Speaker 1: When you said you want the culture to be similar, or your brand, what is that like?
25:53
Speaker: We ran into some problems up in Cairns after I left with a member behaving badly, shall we say?
25:58
Speaker: And there were some issues arising out of that.
26:00
Speaker: And out of that, I thought, well, I've got no recourse here to kind of say what you're doing isn't in line with us because I've not got anything written down.
26:08
Speaker: So I wrote our kind of cultural and values down so that I could then go, you're not behaving in line with our values.
26:15
Speaker: I need you to change your behaviour, or this isn't the place for you.
26:18
Speaker: That's written, but it's more about the way it's embodied.
26:21
Speaker: So when I'm looking for musical directors, I'm looking for people with a certain energy and a certain warmth.
26:25
Speaker: Those people who have got that capacity to draw people out of themselves, to encourage the singing from them.
26:30
Speaker: I want people to come for two hours, laugh, sing, not think about all of the stuff they've got to do when they get home again and feel lifted when they go out.
26:38
Speaker: So I'm looking for musical directors who can kind of create that culture.
26:41
Speaker: Little things we do, like putting pronouns on badges and having lots of stuff in our lyric books about how we work and how to connect with each other.
26:48
Speaker: I do all of the emails that go out to all the members.
26:50
Speaker: It allows me to get that same cultural message across to everybody all the time.
26:54
Speaker: And they get used to, you know, my face.
26:56
Speaker: So when I turn up at a camp or a performance weekend or the big show, then it's not so unusual to them.
27:02
Speaker: But yeah, really trying to set that culture of acceptance, so the judgment-free culture, and that's something we're really battling with at the moment.
27:09
Speaker: Unintentional judgment is a really big issue.
27:11
Speaker: I'm talking to the choir directors out there listening to this, and I don't know how to stop it.
27:15
Speaker: It's that someone's sitting singing, and the person in front keeps looking over their shoulder at them.
27:20
Speaker: There could be any number of reasons why the person in front is looking over their shoulder at them.
27:24
Speaker: But because we are fragile humans, we go, I'm doing something wrong.
27:28
Speaker: They don't like my voice.
27:29
Speaker: Oh my goodness, what am I doing?
27:30
Speaker: I should stop singing.
27:32
Speaker: Recently, I've been in my emails trying to talk about how we respond to that and how not to do that to start with, because you could be the reason someone else stops singing.
27:41
Speaker: Because we are fragile.
27:42
Speaker: The voice is a really personal thing.
27:44
Speaker: If someone says, You've got a terrible voice, it's an intrinsic part of you.
27:48
Speaker: And so many, and you would know this as well.
27:50
Speaker: You'd have it with your singers, come in with the baggage, oh, I was told years ago I shouldn't sing.
27:54
Speaker: Or my family tells me to stop family tells me I can't sing.
27:57
Speaker: That's the worst.
27:58
Speaker: Families are horrid to each other.
28:00
Speaker: And goes, Oh, my kids say I can't sing.
28:02
Speaker: I don't care what your kids say, come here and sing with us.
28:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you're listening, you tell your husband and your wife to be kind.
28:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't ever tell anyone they can't sing.
28:11
Speaker 2: It is so personal.
28:13
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, we've learned now not to comment on people's wait till people appearances.
28:16
Speaker 2: Don't comment on their singing either.
28:18
Speaker 2: Because it does real damage.
28:20
Speaker 2: Our mission is to get everybody singing.
28:22
Speaker 2: So the way that we work at Soul Song is that we don't teach, uh we teach by ear, so not with sheet music.
28:27
Speaker 2: We have sheet music available so that those who do have some musical training they be kind it easier.
28:32
Speaker 2: So we teach by ear with lyrics.
28:35
Speaker 2: So you can walk in off the street never having sung before, and you can be singing by the end of the rehearsal.
28:40
Speaker 2: And we have lots of resources to support people if they want to do it outside of rehearsal.
28:44
Speaker 2: So learning tracks and video tutorials where they can sit and just watch me teach the soprano section on a video.
28:50
Speaker 2: They are so well used.
28:52
Speaker 2: And I've got people, so I do the soprano and the alto ones, and Daniel, my son, who I mentioned earlier on, does the baritone or the tenor and bass, depending on whether we're splitting in the arrangement.
29:01
Speaker 2: And I've got people that, you know, walked into it was actually one of your rehearsals, and one of your baritones went, I spend every afternoon with Daniel, either a cup of tea or a glass of wine.
29:09
Speaker 2: I love him.
29:09
Speaker 2: Like she sits and religiously uses the tutorials as a supplement to what she's learning from you at rehearsal.
29:16
Speaker 2: And they've been like easily the biggest difference that we've got in people's sort of confidence.
29:21
Speaker 2: And that's what they then use to record the videos if they want to.
29:24
Speaker 2: But a lot of people just use it as the learning tool.
29:26
Speaker 2: We're coming into our big performance time.
29:28
Speaker 2: So Soul Song, I think one of the other points of difference I like to think about us is that our concerts are big production.
29:35
Speaker 2: So we do them in theaters with multimedia and lights and cameras.
29:38
Speaker 2: Because my background is corporate events and screens and multimedia.
29:41
Speaker 2: That's where I've gone into.
29:42
Speaker 2: So we do these big shows.
29:44
Speaker 2: It's not a choir concert, it's a production.
29:46
Speaker 2: So as we're coming into this time, a lot of what I talk about with the singers, and we have what we call concert prep days.
29:52
Speaker 2: And my big spiel that I've done for a couple of years is now sticking, is we talk about patience, empathy, and grace.
29:57
Speaker 2: Because when it comes to a show day, and everyone's done some kind of show, whether it's an orchestra or singing, whatever, there's a lot of stress, people reacting differently to nerves of performance, people excited, some people terrified, big personalities, some people not so big.
30:10
Speaker 2: So we talk about patience, empathy, and grace, which I've got to come up with a better acronym because it's just PEG.
30:15
Speaker 2: So whatever happens on this day, and it's the same in the rehearsals, we ask you to act with patience.
30:20
Speaker 2: There will be a lot of waiting around, there'll be squealing of microphones, there'll be trying to position people you can't see, someone else has just stood in your way.
30:26
Speaker 2: Have some patience and trust us, we'll get to you know and deal it.
30:30
Speaker 2: Where that can't be solved, have some empathy for those around you.
30:34
Speaker 2: That person may be slightly taller than you, but they may need to stand there because they can't go higher up the risers because they've got a dodgy hip or they've got vertigo, or they need to stand that side of you because they've only got hearing in one ear.
30:44
Speaker 2: So have some empathy to go, well, why is this happening?
30:48
Speaker 2: Or why is this person acting up like this?
30:50
Speaker 2: It could be they're really nervous.
30:52
Speaker 2: So, how do we bring them down?
30:53
Speaker 2: And then grace is how we choose to respond.
30:56
Speaker 2: We can respond with grace, or we can respond in a horrible way and trying to stop people from doing that, knowing that there'll be good moments and bad moments when you've got, yeah, in Brisbane, I've got 200 people on stage.
31:07
Speaker 2: There's going to be some literal and metaphysical rubbing of shoulders.
31:11
Speaker 2: So we just need to remind everyone it's how you act, it's how you respond to those rubbing of shoulders.
31:17
Speaker 1: And the choir is like a mini society.
31:19
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, yes.
31:20
Speaker 1: We need to get along, we need to make it work.
31:22
Speaker 2: And that's one of the best things about being in any kind of adult community group, because work's different.
31:27
Speaker 2: You have to be a persona, you're paid to be there, you just gotta like it a lump it.
31:31
Speaker 2: When you choose voluntarily to go somewhere and potentially invest your money into that, you're working with a bunch of adults, you then have to go, okay, well, how are we going to be a community?
31:39
Speaker 2: How are we going to be the same when we are from such different backgrounds?
31:42
Speaker 2: And there are some people you're never going to get on with, but it's a way of cohabiting with them within this community space of singing.
31:49
Speaker 2: But that's where the science of singing comes in to make it so much easier.
31:52
Speaker 2: So tomorrow I'm off to do another corporate singing sesh, which I adore because I talk about the science of singing.
31:58
Speaker 2: And again, you see this in your rehearsal room every week.
32:00
Speaker 2: The music is what transforms it.
32:02
Speaker 2: The music is what makes us forget how annoyed we are with the person next to us for whatever reason, just because of their existence or because they did something annoying.
32:10
Speaker 2: The science of music, and those who don't know about it, there's so much science behind it, and it's also well proven when you sing, you activate the pleasure centers in your brain.
32:19
Speaker 2: Same ones that you activate when you take illicit drugs, when you exercise, creating all these endorphins, we're reducing the stress in the body, increasing your levels of immunoglobin.
32:29
Speaker 2: And then oxytocin is the big one.
32:31
Speaker 2: So when a mother gives birth and she breastfeeds her baby, that produces oxytocin, which binds her to her baby.
32:37
Speaker 2: You could be in a bridge club or a cycling club for years, and you would get a certain amount of, yeah, you'd make friends, but you're going to make them quicker and deeper when you sing together because we produce oxytocin, and that's a neurochemical soul glue.
32:48
Speaker 2: So that's what we rely on to build our communities, and that's why choir communities are so much more powerful than anyone, than any others.
32:55
Speaker 2: We're launching a new choir in the Sutherland Shire down in Sydney, but we're doing it as a project.
33:00
Speaker 2: So the same way I started West End Social Singers, we're advertising as a 10-week Christmas project.
33:05
Speaker 2: Brand new director to Soul Song, who's fabulous.
33:07
Speaker 2: And it's come along, sing some Christmas songs, a couple of performances at the end, done.
33:12
Speaker 2: When we see how many people we get there, then we'll go, hey, do you want to keep going?
33:17
Speaker 2: But because we've not promised that, if we don't get enough people, we don't continue.
33:21
Speaker 2: I'm not taking anything away because I never promised it to start with.
33:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good.
33:25
Speaker 2: So that might be our new model of trying project choirs first without it being such a commitment.
33:32
Speaker 2: The only other two big multi-choir networks I know of in Australia are Sing Australia, which has been going for years and years and years, and they just have a songbook, and their directors can do anything from that songbook, but only things from the songbook.
33:43
Speaker 2: And then Humming Song, they generally all work as an independent silo.
33:47
Speaker 2: They learn their own songs.
33:48
Speaker 2: Sometimes they will learn the same song to come together.
33:52
Speaker 2: So then when they perform, they might get six of their choirs together.
33:55
Speaker 2: Six choirs or do two or three songs, and then maybe they'll do one or two songs together.
33:59
Speaker 2: Whereas ours are so interconnected.
34:02
Speaker 2: And again, the reason they are is because I said I want people moving around from choir to choir.
34:06
Speaker 2: But also I can offer things like our tours.
34:08
Speaker 2: So we do domestic and international tours, and we have just today crossed a hundred registrations for our tour to Ireland next year.
34:16
Speaker 2: We're going to the Cork International Singers Festival.
34:19
Speaker 2: And I've got members from 16 of our choirs signed up to go because they've all learnt the songs separately.
34:25
Speaker 2: So this isn't something that Peggy down the road, who runs the community choir, she can't afford to work out a big tour to Ireland because she hasn't got the capacity to do that.
34:33
Speaker 2: But we can because we're bringing people from all of the choirs together.
34:36
Speaker 2: So if they weren't learning the same songs, we wouldn't be able to offer that.
34:39
Speaker 1: So the model of the network choir allows you to have a lot of participation and do some really cool things with a healthy number behind you that also comes with its own challenges of actually administering all those different participants as well.
34:56
Speaker 1: So has that been challenging?
34:57
Speaker 2: Easily our biggest one.
34:58
Speaker 2: So I have a most amazing, I call her my hard drive.
35:02
Speaker 2: So if I'm the main computer, she just plugs in and takes everything that can't fit in the computer.
35:06
Speaker 2: So Nicky, um, Nicky joined us in 2020 as a viral member.
35:10
Speaker 2: She lived in Singapore and she'd found us that way.
35:12
Speaker 2: So she was singing with us that way.
35:13
Speaker 2: She's amazing.
35:14
Speaker 2: She's really good at admin.
35:15
Speaker 2: We've got this powerhouse kind of spreadsheet that runs everything in the background.
35:18
Speaker 2: But our admin is very clumsy.
35:20
Speaker 2: Not by our fault, our systems don't connect with each other.
35:23
Speaker 2: So the other reason with we're not launching any other new choirs yet is because we need to tidy up our back of house.
35:29
Speaker 2: This is a big thing to think of again if you're entering into this.
35:32
Speaker 2: Well, how are you going to administer at all?
35:34
Speaker 2: We do weekly payments, which again most choirs don't, because it's a massive amount of work.
35:38
Speaker 2: But I know not everyone can afford to do a term payment.
35:41
Speaker 2: So we have both options.
35:43
Speaker 2: I'd rather have that weekly option to make it accessible for people who can't do an upfront payment.
35:47
Speaker 2: We also do a concession price, which most choirs don't do as well.
35:51
Speaker 2: But the admin around that is ridiculous.
35:54
Speaker 2: Insane.
35:55
Speaker 2: All I've done in this big dream of let's have more choirs, I'll be able to sub out the business stuff and do the creative.
36:02
Speaker 2: All I've done is just give myself a whole lot more work than I had originally.
36:06
Speaker 2: The vision is, yeah, we will we'll get there, I believe we'll get there.
36:09
Speaker 2: But people would look at it on paper and go, it's amazing.
36:11
Speaker 2: And it's like, you have no idea.
36:14
Speaker 1: One of the things that that Jacq and I did, just for those people listening, is I don't know how long ago, a couple of years, 2024.
36:21
Speaker 2: 2024.
36:22
Speaker 1: We put together an original show called Bangers and Mashups, which somebody from your choir came up with, and it was a great title.
36:27
Speaker 1: Loved it.
36:28
Speaker 2: It was brilliant.
36:28
Speaker 2: So the reason I liked Kerrie straight away, a good two years before this, Kerrie had reached out to me and said, Kerrie had sung with Viral Choir.
36:36
Speaker 2: Then we met very briefly in Hobart at the Festival of Voices.
36:40
Speaker 2: And then Kerrie followed up with an email and said, In a couple of years' time, do you guys want to do some kind of joint choir thing?
36:46
Speaker 2: And I went, I love someone that's working as far ahead as I am, because most people will come.
36:50
Speaker 2: Do you want to do something of six months?
36:51
Speaker 2: I'm like, no.
36:52
Speaker 2: Yeah.
36:52
Speaker 2: I'm already way past six months.
36:55
Speaker 2: So that happened.
36:56
Speaker 2: I said yes.
36:56
Speaker 2: We didn't know what it was going to be.
36:58
Speaker 2: And then I ended up in Adelaide during Adelaide Fringe time.
37:01
Speaker 2: They do it really well.
37:03
Speaker 2: Like, I love it.
37:04
Speaker 2: It was so well done.
37:04
Speaker 2: Now I contacted Kerrie and said, if we're coming, I want to bring my singers during Fringe because I want them to experience that.
37:10
Speaker 2: But that means we can't put on a choir concert.
37:12
Speaker 2: Because if we put on a choir concert during Fringe time, no one is going to come because you've already got so many things to go to.
37:18
Speaker 2: What can we do?
37:19
Speaker 2: So you then came up with the idea of having some medleys and stuff for this theme thing.
37:23
Speaker 2: Then we brainstormed it together.
37:25
Speaker 2: How could it work?
37:25
Speaker 2: We'll have some quiz shows, some interactivity.
37:28
Speaker 2: Then, yes, Vicky from my Balimba choir, we were having lunch after rehearsal one week, a whole bunch of us, and I was just chatting to her, and she just went, Bangers and Mashups.
37:35
Speaker 2: Amazing.
37:37
Speaker 2: And it was born.
37:39
Speaker 2: And again, this is probably one of our key turning points because A, it was our first, you know, chance of foray.
37:44
Speaker 2: We went 120 of us joined with 60 of your guys over in Adelaide and run amok for the weekend and did this big show that is beyond crazy.
37:52
Speaker 2: It's 90-minute jukeboxing, along we call it.
37:54
Speaker 2: It's literally just all the big hits mashed up into themed, you know, sets of bangers, hosted by Daniel and myself, directed by Kerrie.
38:02
Speaker 2: And that was our first foray into really taking a big group anywhere.
38:06
Speaker 2: And that's what then has allowed us to do these other tours.
38:09
Speaker 2: Because again, if we go on tour to the UK or in tour, you know, you go to Dublin and put on a choir concert.
38:14
Speaker 2: Again, no one's coming.
38:15
Speaker 2: The only people that come to choir concerts are friends and family.
38:17
Speaker 2: Maybe the colleague and an odd person that's seen it on a flyer.
38:20
Speaker 2: Because we then had this show, I went, well, we can tour this to other fringes.
38:24
Speaker 2: So we've now performed it in Brighton Fringe and in Bath Fringe and in Newcastle Fringe and Wellington Fringe.
38:30
Speaker 2: We're trying to do it in Dublin, although not at a Fringe festival next year.
38:33
Speaker 2: But that's allowed us to have a touring thing as well, which we would never have thought about.
38:37
Speaker 2: So that was a phenomenal change in the way that we do things as well.
38:41
Speaker 1: And it's coming to Adelaide Fringe next year.
38:43
Speaker 2: It is.
38:43
Speaker 2: We've just confirmed our dates two nights this year.
38:45
Speaker 2: She says, trying to remember them the 20th and 21st, or whatever Friday and Saturday of that weekend of March is.
38:52
Speaker 2: Come along and get your bang on with us in Adelaide.
38:54
Speaker 2: If you don't live in Adelaide, come to Adelaide for it because the Fringe, they honestly, I think Adelaide does Fringe better than Edinburgh.
39:01
Speaker 2: It's controversial.
39:03
Speaker 1: You heard it here.
39:05
Speaker 2: So come across, run amuck.
39:06
Speaker 2: We're on the last night of Fringe, so come and party up the closing night of Fringe with Bangers and Mashups.
39:11
Speaker 1: It's gonna be insane.
39:12
Speaker 1: As always.
39:12
Speaker 2: It will be.
39:13
Speaker 2: And again, we'll have several hundred performers.
39:15
Speaker 2: We're gonna split them into two casts.
39:17
Speaker 2: The other thing to think about when you're if you were thinking about doing a multi-choir network is the issue of becoming too big.
39:23
Speaker 2: So in Adelaide, we have over 200 members.
39:26
Speaker 2: In Brisbane, I have over 300 members.
39:28
Speaker 2: So I go, oh let's give them a performance.
39:30
Speaker 2: People like to get out and perform.
39:31
Speaker 2: Oh, who wants to pop up up at these markets?
39:33
Speaker 2: And I get 85 people wanting to pop up at a market, you know, in a three by three.
39:37
Speaker 2: That doesn't work.
39:38
Speaker 2: So our biggest issue now in our bigger choirs is too many numbers.
39:43
Speaker 2: So I've had other people approach wanting to, you know, have more choirs in Brisbane.
39:46
Speaker 2: I can't because I've already got 200 people on stage in a few weeks' time, and I don't want more than that on stage because it becomes a bit anonymous for the performers.
39:55
Speaker 2: When I said who wants to go to Festival of Voices in Hobart next year, I had 260 members say they want to go.
40:01
Speaker 2: I can't take 260 members.
40:03
Speaker 2: That's extreme.
40:04
Speaker 1: Yeah.
40:05
Speaker 2: It's an invasion.
40:06
Speaker 1: That's like double the population of Tasmania.
40:10
Speaker 2: Um I made sure I was on a Zoom call with um the other Kerry who you know from Festival of Voices, before I gave her the number, I wanted to see her reaction when I told her how many people wanted to go.
40:20
Speaker 2: We put our emphasis on process rather than product.
40:24
Speaker 2: So I don't care whether what we get on stage is perfect as long as we've had a good time getting there, and then they tell their stories and that yeah, it's an energetic and passionate performance.
40:34
Speaker 2: People will forgive a lot if it's not perfect as long as they are entertained by it.
40:38
Speaker 2: So we don't sing with folders.
40:39
Speaker 2: I'm not criticizing those who do.
40:41
Speaker 2: That's fine.
40:42
Speaker 2: Our place is to remove that barrier and just to sing with passion and fun and a raw, unpolished sort of thing that people can actually relate to.
40:51
Speaker 1: Which is an education for the people singing because they really want their performance to be perfect.
40:56
Speaker 1: There are some people that stress a little bit about things like choreography or a little bit of movement, and they stress because they are worried it won't be perfect, but that's not actually the goal.
41:07
Speaker 2: No, and that's where we get to come back to that, you know, patience, empathy, grace, handle yourself.
41:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's not going to be right.
41:12
Speaker 2: And some people come to two or three rehearsals a week and they know their stuff, and it's brilliant.
41:16
Speaker 2: The person next to them might have come three or four times, but they quite like performing, so they're gonna get up a stage, give it a crack, and they're standing next to someone who knows every single beat and every single rest and every single move, and they have to succumb to the person who's just gliding along behind them having a ball and not let it annoy them.
41:34
Speaker 1: Slice of life, really, isn't it?
41:35
Speaker 2: Yep.
41:35
Speaker 1: So if someone is listening, I'm sure there'll be lots, but if there's someone listening who's very keen to join a Soul Song choir, where can they go?
41:44
Speaker 2: Two types of people might be listening.
41:45
Speaker 2: You might have some musical directors listening, in which case, come to our website, have a look at work with us.
41:50
Speaker 2: If you read some stuff on there that resonates with you, some of the words we use about who we're looking for, what we're looking for, doesn't matter what time of year it is, reach out to us because we love to chat to people and go, maybe there's a possibility that you could start a Soul Song somewhere.
42:03
Speaker 2: If you're someone that just wants to sing, are you already singing somewhere, you want more singing, or you're looking for something different.
42:08
Speaker 2: We don't want to steal people from other choirs, but if you're looking for something different, Soul Song Choirs website, you Google it, we come up straight away.
42:15
Speaker 2: Then you can check out all of the rehearsals closest to you.
42:17
Speaker 2: I said we're all over Australia.
42:19
Speaker 2: Well, we're not all over Australia, we're not in Victoria at all yet.
42:21
Speaker 2: Well, the ACT.
42:22
Speaker 2: Uh, we've got a Viral member in the Northern Territory.
42:24
Speaker 2: We've got three Viral members in uh Melbourne, but we're not physically there yet.
42:28
Speaker 2: So, yes, wherever you are singing, you can sing online with us or you can come in person.
42:32
Speaker 2: And again, because you can sing online and then travel with us if you want to do choir tours with a difference.
42:36
Speaker 2: So we've got members in the UK, so I met them for the first time on our UK tour.
42:40
Speaker 2: They're coming to Ireland, they're still learning the stuff in the UK, and they're coming on our island tour, and we'll see them there.
42:45
Speaker 1: It's a great model.
42:46
Speaker 1: We're gonna finish our chat today with a sing-along segment.
42:50
Speaker 1: Is there anything in particular that you had in mind to sing?
42:54
Speaker 2: There is one.
42:54
Speaker 2: What I'm hoping I've got across to people is that my mission, Soul Song's mission, is I want people to sing.
43:01
Speaker 2: I think music is healing, it's community building, it's restorative.
43:05
Speaker 2: Music is really important to us.
43:07
Speaker 2: So I was thinking of all kinds of songs we could have done, something in a high brow, something really indulgent that I like to sing.
43:12
Speaker 2: And I went, no, you want people singing.
43:14
Speaker 2: So people have been listening to this, they're in the garden, they're in the car, they're running, whatever they're gonna do.
43:18
Speaker 2: We want them to sing along with us right now.
43:20
Speaker 2: So I thought we would do listen to the music by Doobie Brothers because it talks about music, how important it is, and the joys of it.
43:29
Speaker 1: Love it.
43:29
Speaker 1: So if you want to sing along with us, you're absolutely welcome.
43:32
Speaker 1: This is what it's for.
43:33
Speaker 1: Sing along a harmony, sing along a melody, do a solo over the top, or you could do some beatboxing, a bass line.
43:38
Speaker 1: The options are endless, really.
43:39
Speaker 1: What you want to do.
43:41
Speaker 1: So we're gonna sing, what do you think, a chorus?
43:43
Speaker 2: Or actually, to get the message, I have to do two very short verses and then into the chorus.
43:47
Speaker 1: Got it.
43:47
Speaker 2: And then we'll see whether we doubled the chorus.
43:49
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll hang out for that.
43:50
Speaker 2: But I've just had to put the lyrics on my phone because anyone that sings with me ever knows that I'm really, really bad at lyrics.
43:55
Speaker 1: That's okay, so am I.
43:56
Speaker 1: So that's fine.
43:57
Speaker 2: So you come and join in the chorus.
43:58
Speaker 2: That's it.
43:58
Speaker 2: You do you know the Song?
44:00
Speaker 1: Yes.
44:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
44:00
Speaker 1: But before we do, I just want to say thank you so much, Jacq, for coming on and chatting to us about your story and this behemoth, which is Soul Song Choirs and just your vision and your passion that comes through every time you talk.
44:14
Speaker 2: I think good on you for connecting people, giving people some inspiration.
44:18
Speaker 1: Here we go.
44:19
Speaker 1: This is Listen to the Music.
44:21
Speaker 2: Don't you feel it growing day by day, people getting ready for the news.
44:29
Speaker 1: Some are happy, summer sad.
44:32
Speaker 1: Oh, we gotta let the music play.
44:38
Speaker 2: What the people need is a way to make 'em smile.
44:41
Speaker 2: It ain't so hard to do if you know how.
44:45
Speaker 1: Gotta get a message, get it on through.
44:49
Speaker 1: Oh now mama, don't you ask me why?
44:54
Speaker: Oh listen to the music.
44:57
Speaker: Listen to the music.
45:12
Speaker 1: Well, that was my chat with Jacqueline Larsen, and I hope you enjoyed the episode today.
45:16
Speaker 1: If you did, I would really love it if you could share it with your friends and other choir geeks, that would be amazing.
45:22
Speaker 1: You can send them the link to this episode, or you can share it on social media.
45:26
Speaker 1: And finally, if you have any feedback or any ideas for an episode, or you might be interested in being a guest on the show, send me an email, I'd love to get in touch.
45:34
Speaker 1: My email is mlchoirsispodcast@ gmail.com.
45:39
Speaker 1: Thanks again for being with me today, and I'll see you next time.