Daveed Goldman and Nobu Adilman are very busy these days. The community choir they founded in 2011, aptly (and enthusiastically) named “Choir! Choir! Choir!,” is amassing viral attention for their recent performance of the late, great David Bowie’s Space Oddity. The video of the event has been watched more than 500,000 times. Fortunately, I was able to speak to Nobu over the phone.
“Who is this? How did you get my number?” he asked monotonously. I balked for a moment, and then he gently laughed. “I’m just kidding, don’t worry.”
I was relieved. I can sense that Nobu and Daveed (who refer to themselves jointly as “DaBu”) are warm, light-hearted, and humorous guys, at least if our online interactions are good indicators. The choir members can follow their posts and announcements on the Choir! Choir! Choir! Facebook group. Members can post song suggestions and vote on which songs they want to sing at upcoming meetings; they can also do this on their website, choirchoirchoir.com. The site specifically includes easy directions for how to sign up. The group meets on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at Clinton’s Tavern (693 Bloor St West) for a modest cover of $5. Nobu and Daveed teach their unique song arrangements on the night of the performance, which is then rehearsed until it is ready to be filmed. No formal singing training is required, and all are welcome to join.
I was curious to know how their choir project began, and Nobu was glad to fill me in.
“We had zero strategy on any level. It was originally a night so our friends could get together and we could lead our friends singing. Somehow the message got out and there were strangers at the first practice, and Eye Weekly came out and took a photo of us,” he explained.
“This idea took off before we had time to think about what it was. At the end of the session we said we’d do it again next month, and people wanted to do it again the next day. So for four years we’ve been meeting twice weekly. It’s actually our fifth birthday on February 2.”
I asked Nobu to tell me about how he booked the AGO for the Space Oddity performance.
“I called Sean O’Neill, who is the Associate Director of Programming and Partnerships at the AGO. We had organized a [performance] with Patti Smith a few years ago, so they knew us. I sent him a message on Monday, and by the end of the day he had us booked in the building for Saturday night,” Nobu explained.
The Choir! Choir! Choir! “Tribute to David Bowie” at the AGO was a success, attracting an audience of over 500 eager singers.
“The collective feeling about Bowie dying was that it felt to people like they had lost someone they knew. Originally, we had plans to do a Bieber song, but when you’re running a music choir and members are so tuned in to what’s going on, it felt like it would have been wrong not to sing Bowie. So we switched our whole week and we announced we would sing Bowie instead of Bieber, and everyone was really happy.”
He also told me his own personal Bowie story:
“Space Oddity was a song in particular I obsessed over as a kid. I went to the Uptown Theatre in Toronto as a kid with some friends, and we saw the Ziggy Stardust concert film. We actually had to find an adult to buy us tickets because of the PG rating.”
I told him that Choir! Choir! Choir! has a lot of appeal due to its relaxed atmosphere and inclusive environment.
“We had a tagline when we started: ‘Choir is Not a Democracy,’” he told me. “As leaders of a large group, we listen to people and we anticipate what the members want. We as a choir have grown largely because of this passionate group of people that are part of it. Once momentum picked up, people shared the idea knowing anyone could show up, and it became interesting to see who would come.”
I asked him if Choir! Choir! Choir! ever feels overwhelming or difficult to manage.
“When you have 300 to 500 people singing back to you, it is an overwhelming sensation, and it’s very beautiful. Daveed and I get the best seat in the house. I get overwhelmed that people want to come out, and that people are passionate about what we’re doing. At times, in the moment things can get chaotic, but we thrive on chaos…we don’t want to lose that sense of chaos, ‘cause it would feel boring otherwise.”
There appears to be only one rule of Choir! Choir! Choir!: “Listen to the fucking songs.” Daveed and Nobu will guide you through the rest.
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