People join in song during a rehearsal for Choir! Choir! Choir! at No One Writes to the Colonel on College Street in Toronto on Aug. 23, 2011.
Nobu Adilman is trying to please the hundred people in front of him, but it's not easy.
"Choir's tough," he tells a woman at the back of the bar. She wants to sing the highest part of the Eurythmics' Here Comes the Rain, but Mr. Adilman has just given the part to a group standing in front of him.
He is, of course, joking. This choir is not tough. Anyone can join Choir! Choir! Choir! and no one is judging the good from the bad. What started as a spontaneous Facebook event that saw 20 people gather at a Queen West real-estate office to sing during a February snowstorm has grown to a group of close to 100 voices on any given night. The project has already gained local notoriety, with a twinkle of national attention: their cover of Bryan Adams's Run to You got a shout-out from the singer on Twitter and close to 9,000 views on YouTube, but was snubbed as an entry to CBC's Cover Me Canada contest. They've practised almost every week since that first evening, singing everything from David Bowie to Elliott Smith.
Not 15 seconds later, Mr. Adilman is conducting the ragtag crew through a series of shoo-wop-shoo-wops, and he continues, layer by layer, to construct the song.
No layer is perfect at first, but the crowd tries until they get it right. Drinks in hand, the band of choir hopefuls and happy hipsters alternate between clamouring for parts and giving Mr. Adilman and his co-star, guitarist Daveed Goldman, their full attention. This is as DIY as it gets; at one point, the conductors and the crowd argue over whether or not they've been singing in the wrong key the whole time. Upon reviewing the original track, the room goes silent – not because the crowd shuts up, but because someone is calling the iPhone that is playing the song.
An hour and a few full takes later, the song is perfected, recorded and readied to post online, joining a collection of three dozen covers on their SoundCloud page.
The crowd retreats for mojitos, cigarettes and a much needed breather.
Guided by Mr. Adilman and Mr. Goldman, Choir! Choir! Choir! is a fully inclusive public choir that meets every week to construct large-scale public pop-song performances. It is both a live concert and a social experiment, blurring the line between audience and performer.
"People in the audience can see us perform one week and be part of it the next," Mr. Goldman says after putting the Eurythmics song to bed. "It's so much fun."
The possibilities for collaboration are endless and the curators are working on potential partnerships ranging from a string quartet to a ukulele ensemble. They've already played their own shows, including a sold-out gig at The Boat in Kensington – where, when there wasn't enough space inside for both the choir and the audience, the choir went outside to serenade the lineup with Fleetwood Mac's Say You Love Me.
This Friday, Sept. 9, they'll join other performers at The Great Hall on Queen West for Loving in the Name Of, a regular dance party and DJ night.
The anyone-can-join nature of C!C!C! makes it a unique slice of Toronto's arts and culture scene. Each week is both performance and practice – a chance both to be entertained and to meet new people. "It makes people do things they wouldn't ordinarily do," Mr. Goldman says.
The crowd of 20- and 30-somethings has grown each week, largely by word of mouth.
"The best part is just singing," says Nyles Miszczyk, 29. "It might be all the breathing. It's the ultimate high."
Freelance writer Kelly Jones, 38, says singing with the choir is "intoxicating." She's not the only person in her family to get a rush from it – she's even taken her two young kids to the choir and they've loved it too. Her daughter "can't wait to tell everyone at school," she says.
Mr. Adilman and Mr. Goldman are in the business of entertaining, though this is their first public choir experiment. During the day, Mr. Goldman entertains hungry diners as manager of the hot College and Bathurst brunch spot Aunties and Uncles. Mr. Adilman is a multi-faceted entertainment personality – a long-time television host, writer and actor, he's appeared on shows from Trailer Park Boys to the Food Network's Food Jammers.
The weekly choir meetings, lately held at No One Writes to the Colonel at College and Bathurst, have become a whole new staple in their lives. Mr. Goldman, who's played solo music most of his life, calls C!C!C! "a full 180 for me."
"The organizational side of having a choir was something I wasn't expecting," Mr. Adilman says. The more the choir grows, the more organization it will require and the less organic it could become. "We don't want to grow too large or implode."
They'll work out those details in time. Right now, they're focused on enjoying the choir.
"The point was always just to get more people to sing and just have fun," Mr. Goldman says. "The more people who want to sing, the better. It's really about us – we're our own audience. We have fun singing."
Surrounding himself with the choir has been something of an inspiration for Mr. Adilman. "When you're doing some thing that's creative, a lot of the time it'll attract the people you want to have around you. That's what happened with this choir."
Listen to some Choir! Choir! Choir! selections on SoundCloud.com
Those magic moments don't end at the end of each choir session. You can find them in perpetuity online at SoundCloud.com/choir-choir-choir. Herewith, a dissection of some of their most popular covers:
England Dan & John Ford Coley
I'd Really Love To See You Tonight
A slow burn compared to their other songs, this almost functions as a recruiting tool for the choir: They don't want to change your life, but they'd really love to see you sing with them tonight.
Wham
Higher highs than George Michael. This may be a part-time choir but it won't bring you down. Promise.
Sloan
Excellent balance of ba-da-bop-ba-das with the lyrics and some rare solo vocal moments. Sloan is a good band. Choir! Choir! Choir! is a good choir.
Fleetwood Mac
An earlier recording, there are fewer members here, revealing more individual voices and the choir's deeply held demographic secret: Just like my high-school choir, there are six girls singing for every guy who's there.
Bryan Adams
Vocals come through like a rich, full-bodied wine with hints of careful picking but without the pretension of that description. Stick around for the clapping.