{"id":866969,"date":"2026-10-01T10:52:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T10:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/866969\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T10:52:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T10:52:15","slug":"the-growth-of-one-day-choirs-where-everyone-sings-with-strangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/866969\/","title":{"rendered":"The growth of one day\u202fchoirs, where everyone sings with strangers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hong Kong\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\n More than 500 people crammed into a sold out, standing-room-only concert hall in Hong Kong on a recent Monday night. At show time, the lights dimmed, and the crowd cheered \u2014 but a band didn\u2019t appear on stage.\n <\/p>\n

\n Instead, Astrid Jorgensen, a former high school music teacher and the founder of Pub Choir<\/a>, spent 90 minutes teaching the crowd to sing Earth, Wind & Fire\u2019s \u201cSeptember.\u201d At the end of the evening, the crowd belted out the song.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cPeople really want to not just receive music but to make music,\u201d Jorgensen told CNN before the show. \u201cThose two things feel very different.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Jorgensen has been running crowd-led concerts since 2017, when she held the first event in an Australian pub with just 70 people in attendance. Since then, she\u2019s taken Pub Choir out of the pub and across the world, teaching hundreds of thousands of people to sing everything from \u201cI want it that way\u201d by The Backstreet Boys to Toto\u2019s \u201cAfrica.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n There\u2019s no audition, no long-term commitment and no talent required \u2014 audience members simply buy a ticket to get in. \u201cYour weird voices are welcome. So what if you miss all the notes? It\u2019s not a crime to sing out of tune,\u201d she said in the show\u2019s introduction.\n <\/p>\n

\n On the night, attendees pick whether they\u2019ll sing the low, medium or high notes, which come together to create a three-part harmony. They learn to follow a simple music-reading system Jorgensen created. She makes jokes and gently ribs attendees, resulting in an event that feels like a concert mixed with a stand-up show.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cForget about your existential dread. Repress all of your anxiety for a few hours,\u201d Jorgensen said during the show\u2019s opener. \u201cYour only job at this show is to try your best to feel better.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n It seems to be resonating with the stressed-out masses. Pub Choir is now on its biggest tour yet, visiting several cities in Asia, before heading to Europe. Jorgensen said she\u2019ll teach about 70,000 people this year.\n <\/p>\n

\"Astrid<\/p>\n

\n Other so-called pop-up or one-day choirs are cropping up across the world. In Singapore, members of the Sing Song Social Club meet regularly; in September attendees sang \u201cAll These Things That I\u2019ve Done\u201d by The Killers. Toronto\u2019s\u202fChoir!\u202fChoir!\u202fChoir!<\/a>\u202f\u2014 which advertises itself as \u201ca show where you can BE the show\u201d \u2014 is touring Canada\u202fand more than 20 towns and cities in the US. And New York-based\u202fGaia Music Collective<\/a>, which\u202fhosts regular drop-in choir\u202fsessions, is currently on a tour that will take it to Europe, Canada, the US and Mexico.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis format built around the idea that you can show up, learn a song with a room full of strangers, and then leave is definitely growing in popularity,\u201d said Arla Good, the co-director of The SingWell Project, an international research network and community initiative based at Toronto Metropolitan University that studies the benefits of group singing. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be a good singer to have a good time here, and I think that\u2019s a really important piece.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Pub Choir participants agree. \u201cI don\u2019t sing sing, but it doesn\u2019t matter here,\u201d Pauline Wong told CNN at the show in Hong Kong, adding that she normally only sings karaoke, a popular social pastime in the city. \u201cI just really want to have fun.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"Audience<\/p>\n

\"Audience<\/p>\n

\n Jorgensen asks people to put their phones away for the night. \u201cYou were never gonna watch the video [play] back anyway,\u201d she told the crowd. Adding \u201cyou don\u2019t have the storage space on your phone, your battery is low, let it go.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n She thinks the break from doomscrolling is part of the appeal. \u201cI think we are sorely craving analog experiences, and I think it\u2019s a very quick antidote to that,\u201d she explained to CNN before the show.\n <\/p>\n

\n Singing has wide-ranging benefits from soothing the nervous system<\/a> to providing a moderate physical workout.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n Some studies suggest doing it in a group appears to elevate mood<\/a> in a way that solo singing doesn\u2019t. It also \u201cbrings people together meaningfully \u2026 more than other group activities can,\u201d said Good. The act of singing requires moving around 100 muscles in the face and throat, and doing it together causes people to synchronize their head movements and breathing patterns, according to Good.\n <\/p>\n

\"Astrid<\/p>\n

\n When people move in the same way at the same time \u2014 a phenomenon described as movement synchrony \u2014 they \u201cexperience this intangible thing of \u2018I don\u2019t know where I end, and you begin. We are all this one unit,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Good said that for much of human history, singing was a way to connect and cooperate. But in more recent times, \u201cit became the performer and the audience \u2026 that only the good singers have access to singing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Now, people are taking back singing for themselves. Group singing\u2019s ability to bring people together \u2014 even if they can\u2019t sing in tune \u2014 could help explain why it\u2019s taking off around the world. \u201cIt might not necessarily be my particular show,\u201d said Jorgensen, \u201cBut just the idea that we can connect with each other, we can agree about something, we can make something positive together.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 More than 500 people crammed into a sold out, standing-room-only concert hall in Hong Kong on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":866970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-866969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/866970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}