final thoughts from our southeast asia tour

It's been just over a month since we got back and our hearts are still so full from our tour in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. While I was thrilled to come back to the beautiful Oregon summer, some small part of me misses the humidity of southeast asia… but that’s probably just me reminiscing!

Many chamber choir members got the amazing opportunity to continue their travels abroad after tour as well, with a group of 10 students going to Bali where they did a guest performance representing the chamber choir at the Bali International Choral Festival. A group of friends in the choir wanted to visit Bali so they asked Ethan for some recommendations and he reached out to his connections—when the festival organizers heard that a small group from the Portland State Chamber Choir were visiting, they insisted on a performance! Other individual singers traveled to Manilla, London, and Korea to see friends and family.

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We have some exciting updates from the Voices of Singapore, the choir we collaborated and performed with at our first stop on this tour. If you haven’t already, you can read more about the life-changing concert and rehearsal experience in previous blog posts below. We now have pictures and high quality video and audio to share from this concert, our very first concert on this tour.

    To sum up this tour, I am at a loss for words on how to describe how transformative this experience was for everyone involved. We have been exposed to new food, languages, cultures, religions, and musical traditions, some of which would be very difficult (if not impossible) to find in the United States, let alone Oregon. We made friends with choral singers everywhere we went and even made new friends within the choir. Going on tour is musically demanding in ways that singing throughout the rest of the year is not, and every student in the ensemble rose to the occasion. On this 17 day tour, we performed in 6 concerts and exchanges with 9 local and international choirs. We performed 24 pieces including 3 songs in collaboration concerts, and 5 songs with the Thailand Youth Choral Camp, and we even learned one traditional Thai dance! When I did a final count, I was shocked to realize that we were conducted by 20 different conductors including 8 current or graduating PSU students, 2 Thai students, 7 international conductors, and 2 PSU alumni. Here are some pictures from moments that can't be summed up in numbers...

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Ethan, pianist Colin, and graduate students Ian, Peter, and Phil at a celebratory dinner, with a view of the famous Petronas Towers in Malaysia.

PSU & Thai soloists sing Mozart's Regina Coeli octet at the final camp concert.

Breakfast at Thai Youth Choral Camp: The food at camp was not your typical restaurant Thai food. It was home cooked with love: "the kind of comfort food my mom would make me when I was sick as a kid," one Thai camper said.

Ian and Henry, both graduating this year, sing the duet in Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

Ethan and Alden at a Buddhist Temple in Malaysia.

Smiles and hugs (and yes, some tears) at the final banquet on our last night of tour!

Percussionists showing off during the instrumental break in Balleilakka.

PSU, Voices of Singapore, and New Zealand Youth Choir singers sightseeing together at Cloud Forest in Singapore, the largest greenhouse in the world.

PSU Chamber Choir performs A Drop in the Ocean by Eriks Esenvalds, text from Mother Theresa: "My work is nothing but a drop in the ocean, but if I did not put that drop, the ocean would be one drop the less."

On Ethan’s list of goals on the syllabus for this choir every year, it says in this order “1. To become better musicians and singers, 2. to give high quality, emotionally fulfilling performances, 3. to become better people, and 4. to meet new friends.” This ensemble has undoubtedly achieved all of these and more on this tour and will never forget the experiences we had.
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