So I want to brag a little bit: I planned almost all of this tour myself. This is the first tour we have taken that did not involve performing at an international choir festival or competition, in which case they control most of our itinerary. The reason I have always chosen to take us to these festivals and competitions is that our students (most of whom want to be music educators) get to see choirs from other countries and gain a much more international perspective on our artform. And it doesn’t hurt that the festivals usually provide cheap or free housing and food for a few days. But our contact with the singers in the other choirs is usually quite limited. We get to see them perform and maybe have a meal with them, but we are generally rushing from one performance to another. When our students really get to spend time with their colleagues from other countries, this is where I see the most growth and the most reward. It can also be especially challenging to make meaningful connections with other choirs when you are competing against them.

If you are interested in the growth of choral music, Southeast Asia is the place to be! While East Asian countries like China, Korea and Japan are producing most of the finest Western Classical musicians in the world, it came as a shock to me to learn in 2017 that it is almost impossible to get a music degree in Southeast Asia. The hundreds of millions of people that live in The Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam are only just beginning to offer choir as a class in schools or to form amateur community choruses for adults or kids. And it is so exciting to see how quickly it is catching on and spreading. By my best count, Indonesia alone has formed at least 500 new school choirs since 2000.

Our first stop was Singapore where we got to work with one of the leaders of this choral explosion, Darius Lim. You should really watch his Ted Talk on “Strengthening a Nation Through Choral Singing” below:

Side note: for those of you who attend our performances, I think you have grown used to seeing a lot of joy radiating from us when we sing. Strangely, this does not seem to be the norm in America and especially in Europe. There is a lot of the old-school (maybe German) idea that working hard and having fun are mutually exclusive. I find this true throughout the Classical music world where performances tend to be very formal and where technique takes precedence over emotional communication on stage. I am shocked at the comments we get when we tour Europe. In Greece we had people literally saying “I have never seen a happy choir before.” At European festivals and competitions, I can always count on the singers in the PSU Chamber Choir to be the life of the party. The joy we have when we sing seems to be highly contagious.

Malaysia’s choral culture is even newer than Singapore’s, and one that I had much less knowledge of. On different days we collaborated with two University choirs: one that was mostly music majors and one that was mostly math and science majors. We also worked with Ottophany, Malaysia’s first attempt to create a professional vocal chamber ensemble like Voces8 or Chanticleer. I was truly stunned by the quality of the performances we heard, and again by the joy that their singers have for what they are doing. To be honest, everything about Malaysia took me by surprise. Kuala Lumpur is one of the most modern cities I have been to with amazing modern architecture and city planning, and incredible food! I recommend anyone traveling in Asia to spend a day or two there.

Many of you remember Natthita Wongprom, one of our former graduate teaching assistants who earned her MM in Conducting at PSU two years ago. She conducted the Rose Choir and University Choir and sang in the Chamber Choir. For those of you that don't know Natthita, I hope you have a chance to meet her in the future! You can also read an interview with her in the previous post.

After Natthita graduated, she returned to her native Thailand where she is the second person in all of Thailand to earn a graduate degree in Choral Conducting (and one of her best friends just became the third!). Last year Natthita started the National Children’s Chorus of Thailand. In two years she has grown the organization to include 300+ singers divided up into three choirs by age and ability level. We are leaving our hotel in about 2 hours to go perform for them and hear them sing, and then they will teach us a traditional Thai dance! 

​Natthita got a lot of her early training at an intensive Choir Summer Camp for Thai singers ages 15-30 run by Pawasut Jodi Piriyapongrat, the first person from Thailand to earn a Doctorate in Choral Conducting (she earned her degree at USC just a few years after I did). The camp is run by Chulalongkorn University where Jodi and Natthita now both teach. The camp occurs on their branch campus in Saraburi, about two hours outside Bangkok. Jodi and Natthita invited us to spend four days at the camp living in dorms with the 150ish Thai singers, eating home-cooked food, and joining them for three rehearsals a day. Honestly, who gets to live like this!

To everyone who helped make this possible, either by supporting our tour financially, or by deciding to send your children to PSU, THANK YOU!!!! Thank you for believing in this crazy idea. I really think it has worked. I am watching these young people from all these countries as their horizons are broadening in every way. ​

Final note: this has also been a very challenging tour. This is a long time for our students to be abroad and in such foreign conditions. We were all expecting some food/water-born illnesses, but that has been harder than we were expecting. But I have never seen this group do better at taking care of each other and continuing to be kind and caring no matter what happens. They have seized on every cultural and musical opportunity to its fullest and sung exceptionally well every single day. Two more days and two more performances. I am going to miss this group so much.

- Ethan Sperry, Barre Stoll Professor of Choral Music, Director of Choirs​, Portland State University

Welcome to the Jungle! We spent the last three days working with the Thailand Youth Choral Camp at Chulalongkorn University, Saraburi, in rural Thailand. It is impossible to describe the lush jungle scenery we have been surrounded by - imagine birds and bugs so loud it drowns out your conversations, starry skies full of constellations, and even fireflies in the marsh boardwalk path. Many of us Portlanders are nature lovers, and there was a collective sigh of relief to get out of the bustling city environment for the first time on this trip.​

The Thailand Youth Choral Camp is about 80 singers in total when combined with PSU. Of the Thai singers present, for more than half of them this is their first time ever singing in a choir. Many of them recently graduated from high school or are in college, with quite a few music majors. (We had the privilege of being surrounded by trumpets, flutes, and clarinets practicing in the dorms during breaks.) When you hear the video of our rehearsal in this post, you will see how blown away we have been by their sound and how quickly they learn! It’s all thanks to the conductor who teaches these 9 hour rehearsal days, 10 days in a row. TJ Harper has been directing this camp choir for 8 years, supported administratively by Dr. Jodie Pawasut Piriyapongrat. Jodie’s former conducting students Natthita Wongprom and Supitcha "KC" Kansirisin run warm-ups and conduct one song each. These four people have been our wonderful hosts and leaders for this life-changing musical experience. Jodie also gave a conducting masterclass for PSU music education students Felipe Araya and Kendell McCrary, and Ethan did the same for Thai students Danube and Will.

Just like every choir we have met on tour (and we have met FIVE so far!), the Thai singers and PSU students have become fast friends, spending many late hours playing Badminton and board games after rehearsal. Check out our rehearsal video of "Verbum Caro Factum est" by Hans Leo Hassler below!

​Q: What have you been up to since PSU?

Natthita: After I graduated from PSU, I’ve been back in Thailand for almost two years, and of course I’m doing choir! For now, I’m doing children’s choirs mostly and community choirs. I direct the Thailand Children’s Choir and Wattana Wittaya Academy Girls School Chorus - one choir as the main director and two as an assistant. I am also an adjunct instructor at the Department of Music, Faculty of Humanities, Kasetsart University where I teach one university choir. These three take up most of my time but I am also called in to work with many high school choirs, judge festivals, and frequently teach a senior choir. That’s five choirs on the regular but sometimes up to nine different groups per week, and I also serve as a committee member of the Thailand Choral Directors Association. 

More tomorrow - thanks for tuning in!
​
​- Lindsey

During our travel through the Thai countryside outside of Bangkok, we took a moment to interview Ian as one of our most recent graduates! Ian conducted Trois Chansons de Charles d’Orléans, arr. Claude Debussy, earlier during our travels at KuAsh Theatre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which you can watch on YouTube above.

Ian: Hello! My name is Ian Timmons. I just recently graduated from Portland State with a Masters in Choral Conducting.

Q: And what are you doing now?

Ian: I am going to be continuing on as the community chorus director at Portland state as well as working with professor Coty Raven Morris on starting a recovery choir.

Q: Recovery choir, what is that?

Ian: It is a choir for people who are in recovery from addiction. I am 7 years sober so it is something that is very near dear to my heart, so I am very excited for my two passions - sobriety and choral music - to come together in a way that is going to be really meaningful.

Q: What interested you about community chorus and what are you most excited to do with them?

Ian: I love working with older singers. Something that Ethan often says that I really agree with is: the most precious thing you can give is your time. And so I think the people that volunteer their personal time to make music are the kinds of people that I want to be spending my time with.
This will be my third year with community chorus, and I’m excited to work on more choral fundamentals with them. Our rehearsals are about 50 minutes, so we don't always have time to get into the nitty gritty of it. They are at a place where they have a lot of potential vocally, and so we can really start focusing on those choral fundamentals to take their ensemble to the next level.

Q: Who is in this choir and who has it been historically?

Ian: It is mostly alumni, faculty, and staff. They met in the lunch hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That’s another thing (that makes them so dedicated) is that they give up their lunch hour. Most of them are like, eating a sandwich as they come in and out of the door, but they are so dedicated to making music that they'll give up the one hour a day they have to come and sing. We were actually highlighted in the PSU Magazine recently - you can watch the highlight below: 

Thanks for all you do in support of the Choirs at PSU, Ian - we appreciate you.  

Come back tomorrow for a highlight of our time at choir camp in Thailand! 

​- Lindsey

​I finally finished my laundry at around 2:00 PM and headed out to the beach to join a group of other choir people laying out in the sun, hoping to get a sun tan. (Some of whom received a burnt crisp instead of the attractive sun tan they hoped for). I swam out in the waves and enjoyed the ocean for a while before going back to the hotel and showering, and then walking nearby to one of the thousands of Thai massage establishments in Pattaya for a massage. As the day was fading, a group of us decided to go see the Big Buddha up on the hill, which was a decent walk. It was dusk when we got there, and some very studious dogs scrupulously guarded the entrance of the Temple, which was closed for the night. I tried to woo one of them, but was met with a snarl that would have caused the bravest soul to tremble in fear. 

We continued up the long ascending staircase toward the Big Buddha, and when cresting the top, discovered a temple courtyard of smaller buddhas and small buildings, and a beautiful view of the Pattaya cityscape. While we were there, a man came and sat in front of the Big Buddha, crossed his legs and bowed his head meditatively. We then continued our walk back to the hotel, walking down a busy street full of restaurants, bars, massage parlours and nightclubs. And weed dispensaries, like Portland, are literally on every street corner. Even though I wanted to try a hearty Thai meal in Pattaya, I was not that hungry so I decided to wait until the next day to try out the street food, although I did grab a few scraps of leftover pork from Ethan Sperry and Cher at the restaurant they had gone to. That basically concluded my day, I did stop briefly at a bar for a few drinks before heading back to our hotel. Unfortunately I did not have time to see Pattaya's Walking Street, which is a famous and vibrant nightlife area, known for its bustling cultural atmosphere and entertainment venues. Maybe next time...

​- Jere

Once we all arrived at Universiti Teknologi (UiTM) we had a short combined rehearsal with the incredible UiTM Chamber Choir, singing our Precious Lord and their Soleram. Made up of just 26 singers, the powerful UiTM Chamber Choir is 100% music majors, and it shows in their musicality and passion! They are also lucky enough to have both a choreographer and a costume designer. (see their stunning traditional concert attire below) Though we only had the opportunity to get to know them for a few hours, we immediately felt welcomed by the singers of UiTM and left Kuala Lumpur feeling inspired by their performance. A huge thanks to their emphatic conductor Maryann Magdalena Linnis and all the students we had the privilege to sing with! Find out what makes UiTM unique and follow their journey on their facebook page here.

And with that we were off to Thailand! One delayed flight later, we made it to Bangkok and were reunited there with Natthita Wongprom, our good friend and an alum of the PSU graduate conducting program, but more on her later… Tomorrow it's beach day!
​
- Lindsey