How Astrid Jorgensen turned Pub Choir into a sell-out sensation

Pub choir founder Astrid Jorgensen is on a mission to bring people together through the joy of singing - and she’s having extraordinary success.

I’m in a cavernous room standing shoulder to shoulder with 700 strangers. Men with grey hair and pork pie hats. Middle-aged women in floral wrap dresses. Young men and women with shiny smiles in Doc Martens. A 20-something guy in a Talking Heads T-shirt turns to me and says “Should be epic” as a woman bounds on to the stage.

“Hello! How the bloody hell are you?” Astrid Jorgensen asks, her arms wide open. “Who’s here for the first time?”

She looks at the raised hands in the crowd. “Well, where have you been? We’ve been here – where were you?”

It’s part banter, part teasing, and a first-class lesson in ice breaking, as Jorgensen dives in. “I’m going to sing a line from a song and if you know what comes next, sing it back to me. I don’t care if you can sing or not; I just want to see how clever you are. Here we go.” She warbles: “Joy to the world ... ”

Astrid Jorgensen in action at pub choir at Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane this year.

The crowd finishes the line: “All the boys and girls.” Jorgensen grins from the stage. “Beautiful!” She smiles. “See, singing is easy”.

For the next few minutes this pocket rocket will herd all 700 of us around the room, not unlike a cattle dog expertly moving sheep into their corrals.

What was one mass of humanity in all shapes, sizes, ages and stages is now three distinct singing groups: the High Ladies (soprano), the Low Ladies (alto) and the Men (tenor).

The groups are gender fluid, however, as a sign on a screen reminds us: “These lanes use gender for context, but your voice is your business, sing what feels good for you!”

After a few more minutes of instruction, administration and some cracking jokes from Jorgensen, the lyrics to The Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition appear on the screen. Jorgensen places her hands on her keyboard.

“Are you ready to sing?” she asks.

I look around the room, at all the expectant faces. These people were born ready. It’s just that some of us have forgotten how to. But Jorgensen, as choir leader, conductor, music arranger, ringmaster, taskmaster and cheerleader, knows exactly what she’s doing.

She’s giving us all permission to open our mouths – or “sound holes”, as she calls them – and sing together, just for fun. For joy. For release. For connection. For the hell of it. In this crowd, it doesn’t matter if you are a trained opera singer or a pitchy screecher. Because this is Pub Choir and it is – just as the guy in the Talking Heads T-shirt predicted – epic.

Astrid Jorgensen from Pub Choir. Picture: David Kelly

Pub Choir was born in 2017 at the Bearded Lady bar in Brisbane’s West End, in a room much smaller than this one, and with a crowd much smaller than this one. Seventy people turned up.

Perhaps the best barometer of how much it has grown is that next week, at a sold-out show at Brisbane’s Riverstage (with all proceeds going to the Women’s Legal Service), there will be 7000 people.

Another measure might be that Jorgensen has just returned from a 16-date, sellout Pub Choir tour of the UK and the US. Or maybe that time Mariah Carey tweeted about the choir. Or when Kate Bush emailed to say how much she loved the Pub Choir rendition of Running Up That Hill. Or when Paul Kelly asked if he could come and sing with them.

Despite its growth, it remains as it always was, and just as Jorgensen has always described it: “A group singing lesson that doesn’t suck.”

At her home in inner city Brisbane, and in between working out the vocal arrangements and instrumental parts for the upcoming Riverstage song – she won’t say what it is as part of the Pub Choir fun is not knowing what you’re about to sing – the 33 year old is reflecting on the little choir that could.

“I used to be a schoolteacher, and at the same time I was running seven community choirs,” Jorgensen says. “Teaching made me feel a little overwhelmed; I just never felt like I was doing a great job at it. I felt like I was always over-explaining and not getting through, but with choir, it felt very instinctive. I always knew what to do to bring voices together, what to say to get people to change the sound, or try something different, and I just loved it.”

What Jorgenson didn’t love was the competitive aspect of choral singing. Or how hard it was to get people to attend. Wouldn’t it be good, she thought, if there was a choir where people could just turn up? Wouldn’t it be glorious, if people could remember what it felt like to just lose themselves in a song?

Astrid Jorgensen on stage for Pub Choir.

“I was looking for less-competitive music making,” she says.

“I think that, culturally, we had decided that choirs were really kind of lame and uncomfortable and daggy. I have never believed that; I’d always been in choirs, at school, at uni, I’d joined adult choirs myself.

“But I didn’t know why I couldn’t convince other people to join, so I decided that I would put out an invitation – it was on a Facebook post – asking people to come sing in a choir one night at the Bearded Lady, and listing all the things it wasn’t. No satin sashes. No audition. No prizes. No commitment. Just a really beautiful one-night stand. “So I posted the invite and about 30 people answered, which I thought was pretty good, then when 70 turned up, I thought it was fantastic,” Jorgensen grins.

Does she remember what song it was?

“Slice of Heaven by Dave Dobbyn. It was excellent.”

You can still watch that very first Pub Choir at the Bearded Lady in 2017, belting out Slice of Heaven’s familiar “Da, da, da” on Facebook.

And it is excellent, particularly watching the jubilation in the room when, under Jorgensen’s tutelage, they come to the end of the song, and explode into cheers.

Because, here’s the thing: Jorgensen’s idea of bringing people together to sing just one song is not necessarily a new idea. What is special is Jorgensen’s way of doing it.

Her teaching days come in handy, as does her Bachelor of Arts, majoring in aural music and conducting from the University in Queensland (2010), followed by a Master of Music (vocal performance) at the Queensland Conservatorium (2011).

This woman knows how to arrange a song and assign its various parts. She knows what will sound good in harmony and what won’t. She knows how to get people who have never read music to follow the melody on the screen using her coloured pen lines and arrows and gifs to plot out a path. If anyone can get a room full of jittery strangers to sing, it’s Jorgensen.

So, on that first night, while everyone else in the room looked frankly astonished at how good they sounded, Jorgensen was not. What surprised her – and delights her still – was the “magic”.

Astrid Jorgensen. Picture: David Kelly

“I think what I wasn’t ready for was how quickly it felt magical,” Jorgensen says.

“It just didn’t take long for them to feel comfortable, and to just give it a go. What is
very evident is that human beings love to sing together. “You cannot contribute more than your single voice in a choir, and when you are in a room with 3000 people you have subsumed that voice. So it doesn’t matter.

“It’s anonymous – not in a scary, mob way but in the best way. And it’s very primal. Humans have always sung together, and it creates this wonderful feeling of togetherness. In a world where we can feel pretty divided, it feels like a special opportunity to agree with people.”

There’s something else that’s magical about Pub Choir. I look around the room, and realise there is not one mobile phone in sight. No one is holding their phone aloft, filming.

Jorgensen smiles.

“I know – it’s great, isn’t it?” she says.

“I think people are craving that analogue experience. To be right in the moment, and in that moment I want you to feel something, not record it.”

And looking around the room, it’s also clear that many people are feeling all sorts of emotions.

“Every now and again, I do see someone being very moved, and every show hits differently,” Jorgensen says.

“A song might take them back to an old love, or it might hold a special memory of their mother’s funeral. I don’t really generally go out in the audience after shows, because I don’t want to make it about me. I want it to be all them, I want them to go home on this cloud of feelings.”

She broke her own rule, however, on her recent overseas tour, meeting people she had previously only seen on her computer.

Couch Choir.

During the Covid pandemic, Pub Choir pivoted into Couch Choir, as tens of thousands of people around the world joined for a free, global singalong. The clips are still on YouTube of frontline health workers, families, the odd prime minister and burly blokes singing David Bowie’s Heroes, or Close to You by The Carpenters.

They are a moving watch, but until she went to the US, Jorgensen says, she had “no idea” of the impact Couch Choir had on people.

“They were lining up after the show for hours, hundreds of people, wanting to tell me what Couch Choir had meant to them,” she says of the tour.

“We had about 20,000 people joining in around the world, and some people joined in every one we did. There were superfans, and I wanted to go over there before that memory faded, and meet some people who were a part of that. But I didn’t expect just how much it meant to people.

“One woman drove for nine hours from Washington DC, and I recognised her from the videos. In Seattle, this guy who was about 70, with one leg, was lining up for ages. He said that he was in the original production of Hair, and that he had sung professionally and had run choirs his whole life. He said, ‘I just stopped. I thought I had nothing left to give. Now I know I have so much to teach and learn and give again.’ He was crying. “And I think that’s the power of music, of song. It can cause a shift, it can cause revelations, and it can reconnect us to parts of ourselves we thought we’d lost.”

Astrid Jorgensen from Pub Choir. Picture: David Kelly

Pub Choir has come a long way since its early gigs. Back in the Dave Dobbyn days, the singers clutched lyric sheets, until Jorgensen realised it was hard to feel part of a group when everyone was looking down to read.

Over time, she devised ways – the coloured pens, the arrows, the gifs, all the visual cues on the screen – to make it easier for people to follow the melody, especially for songs they didn’t know.

“I am much better now at teaching than I used to be, and so much more confident,” Jorgensen says.

“Pub Choir is trademarked now. I did coin the term, and although other people might be doing similar things, I think ours is the best. That’s a bold thing to say, and it’s taken me a long time to have the confidence to say it.

“But I’ve failed at enough things to know when something is really working. And I think people know that I know what I’m doing, and even if there are alternatives, they would still choose to come to Pub Choir. And I have to be confident, because people have to trust me; if they’re going to come with me through a song, they have to feel like they’re in capable hands.”

She laughs. “I think in America their minds were a bit blown, because I was coming in hot on that stage, not in an aggressive way, but I was so excited, just jumping out of my skin – let’s go!”

Off stage, however, Jorgensen dances to a much quieter tune as an introvert, keeping all that fizzing energy strictly for the show. So what does she do after a show, all sweaty and spent?

“Go home and do crosswords,” she laughs.

“I am tired at the end of a show. When you walk out on that stage and you look into the crowd, and you see that people have come here with so much hope and optimism for a great time together, I have to match that energy.

Astrid Jorgensen. Picture: David Kelly

“They’ve come from far away sometimes to be there. They’ve made the effort, they’ve maybe got a sitter for the kids for the night, and they’re all there because they want to connect with something, with someone, with each other.”

Jorgensen makes it look easy, this bringing together of strangers, this coaxing of voices out of mouths that haven’t sung for years.

But behind the scenes, she has spent hours and hours arranging the music for the song she’s chosen, both the choral and instrumental parts.

For the upcoming Christmas show at Riverside, Jorgensen has a 40-piece orchestra accompanying her on stage, and she has written the arrangements for every instrument.

There are some elements that are the same for each show, no matter the song choice. She tries to include as many female musicians as possible in her bands and Pub Choir attendees will be familiar with her regular sidekick, singer/guitarist Dana Gehrman with the best licks and shag haircut in the business. She also always has an Auslan interpreter at the show. And a strict “no dickheads” rule.

Sometimes a surprise guest will stroll out on the stage to perform their own song with the choir. Brendan B. Brown from Wheatus joined Jorgensen on stage in the US for his hit Teenage Dirtbag.

“I don’t do it all the time, even though it’s a wonderful moment,” Jorgensen says.

“When Paul Kelly walked on stage, people just lost their minds, but I don’t want people to start expecting a special guest every time, because we don’t actually need one. We are good enough, just by ourselves.”

Pub Choir in action.

I’m in a cavernous room surrounded by 700 mates. That’s how it feels now that we’ve sung our hearts out together to Sweet Disposition. No longer strangers, we are smiling at each other as we gather our handbags and coats with the song still playing in our ears.

A confession: I didn’t know the song, but it didn’t matter. With Jorgensen as our enthusiastic captain we sailed through it, and as my friend and I walk to the car to go home, we are still singing the chorus: “A moment, a love, a dream, aloud. A moment, a love, a dream, aloud.”

And it occurs to me, with my friend’s arm looped through mine, that this is the magic that Jorgensen is talking about. It occurs to me that this is exactly what Pub Choir is: A moment. A love. A dream, aloud.

Originally published as How Astrid Jorgensen turned Pub Choir into a sell-out sensation