Tour Notes from Ethan

Hello Friends,

Greetings from the rooftop deck at the Hotel Ibis Styles in Bangkok. It’s day 16 of the longest choir tour I have taken with the Portland State Chamber Choir, and I’m trying to wrap my mind around everything we have experienced since we left Portland on June 25. We survived travelling halfway around the world in four separate groups. We have been immersed in the cultures of three of the fastest growing cities in the world. We have toured some of the most important and spectacular holy sites of Hinduism and Buddhism, religions which most Americans know very little about. We have eaten nothing but truly excellent food every single day and at every single price point. (And that really means something considering that we all live in Portland). But most of all, we have spent a portion of almost every single day singing with and for choral singers in these countries. 

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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.

Essentially, this tour was my attempt to use my personal connections - I basically called all my friends who conduct choirs in Southeast Asia (fortunately, I have quite a few and the list is growing fast!) and asked if they would be willing to set up a joint experience for our choirs that would give us more time together 1:1 than if we attended the same festival and let someone else organize it. For those of you who helped support our Bali tour in 2017, that was the seed that grew into this experience. Most choirs in Asia know who we are just because of us winning that competition.

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:

Darius has been a very successful conductor and composer for Children’s Choruses for years. Six years ago he created Voices of Singapore - an organization for Community Choruses of varying ages and ability levels. VOS now enrolls over 2000 singers in over 30 different choruses. Their highest enrollment is in their “silver choruses” where the minimum age is 55. They have a choir for singers with dementia as well as several youth choirs for children with special needs. When I approached Darius about hosting us, he already had a concert planned on June 29 for his most elite chorus of singers ages 18-25 and the New Zealand Youth Chorus - the 40 best singers in New Zealand ages 18-25, and he invited us to crash the party! We had joint rehearsals and a party on the 28th, a concert in one of the finest concert halls in Singapore followed by a joint dinner on the 29th, and a combined sight-seeing excursion on June 30 before we left for Malaysia.

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.

But in coming to Southeast Asia I feel like we had to fly halfway around the world to meet our choral soulmates. Voices of Singapore and New Zealand Youth Choir are as joyous as any choirs I have ever seen. Our singers shared an immediate bond in a way we never have with choirs from our region of the world and cultural heritage. I also want to brag (and the concert was video recorded and we should post it in  by the end of July so you can make up your own mind), but The Portland State Chamber Choir = the 40 best choir singers at Portland State University held their own sharing the stage with VYC = the 40 best young singers in Singapore and NZYC = the 40 best young singers in New Zealand.

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.

But the bulk of our tour has been spent in Thailand, another country with a younger choral tradition, and one that we are already part of! If you have been reading this blog, you should already have read about our joint concert with a “silver choir” at Mahidol University. If not, go back and read that post by Ian Timmons who conducts the PSU Community Chorus. It is beautifully written and very moving.

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!

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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