Walk in as an audience member, leave as a performer

Lots of people think they can’t sing. It’s the sort of thing you only need to be told once for you to stop doing it, in public at least. Founder of the distinctly Australian-sounding Pub Choir, Astrid Jorgensen, reckons that’s bollocks.

“Of course you can sing – you just may not be great at it. Something being difficult is not the same as it being impossible,” she says. “Singing is like any other thing in life: some people are naturally good at it and some have to work harder at it.”

Astrid Jorgensen is the brains behind Pub Choir.Credit: Paul Harris

It’s the basic premise from which the 33-year-old music teacher-turned-choir-leader starts her shows – and it may account for their popularity. “You probably aren’t any good, but like anything, you are allowed to enjoy the experience.”

Jorgensen had been teaching for several years when she landed an unusual gig in Townsville – teaching an entire secondary school to sing in a choir, not just those who put up their hand to join.

“It was the first time I’d had an experience of music making without any measurement metric. I wasn’t marking anyone, there was not an Eisteddfod, there was no concert. It was an incredible experience. It opened my eyes to the idea about music being so much more accessible than I ever envisaged.”

Jorgensen leads Pub Choir at the Triffid in her hometown of Brisbane in 2018.

On her return home to Brisbane, the idea of a large-scale choir open to everyone stuck with her and, in March 2017, Jorgensen hosted the first Pub Choir: about 70 people went along to the Bearded Lady in Brisbane’s West End. Since then, it has snowballed into a thriving business that sees Jorgenson touring, hosting thousands of people dozens of times a year.

Novelist and journalist Trent Dalton went to the show in Brisbane and wrote her a note afterwards saying: “Pub Choir is the sound of people agreeing.”

When COVID-19 hit, audiences tuned in to discover the joys of singing together – albeit remotely – and the idea went global. Even so, nothing can match the impact of being in a room filled with strangers singing together.

As the name suggests, the event happens in a licensed venue. No preparation is required – no one knows which song they’ll be learning until the night. Jorgensen does try to choose songs that most people will be familiar with – “I want it to feel like they’re ahead”. Previous songs include Alanis Morissette’s You Learn, Mumford and Sons’ Little Lion Man and Queen’s I Want To Break Free.

Jorgensen tries to keep pub vibes for the shows, which usually feature an acoustic guitar played by Sahara Beck. This tour, she’s taking one song – none other than ’80s anthem Africa by Toto– and teaching it at all 18 tour locations. Each show will see a different instrument added, and, at the end of the tour, they will be pieced together in a video, a compilation of 18,000 people from across Australia.

“Anyone is allowed to buy a ticket and turn up, it’s a different crowd every night … at the end of the night you are a performer. You walk in as an audience member and by the end of the show you are transformed into something different.”

She loves the democratic nature of choir. “In an orchestra, you have to buy a flute or a violin, with choir, you turn up with your body and the singing comes from you,” she says. “No matter how weird or out of tune you might be, there’s no other voices like yours. That is the magic. That is the thing that I am chasing when I make music with other people, we are the instruments.”

Regular Pub Choir attendee Cara Spencer sang in the Victoria Children’s Choir as a child but hasn’t sung in public since. “Obviously I love to belt out a few hits in the shower or in traffic on the way to work, to the delight of my co-commuters,” she says with a laugh.

The 45-year-old corporate communications specialist has been to Pub Choir shows four times, along with friends from her mothers’ group and their initially sceptical, now-converted husbands.

“It’s so accessible, it doesn’t matter how much skill you’ve got, how you sound or whether you’re totally tone deaf,” Spencer says.

“Everyone feels like – no matter who you are, where you come from – you’re all working to the one thing. You’ve never met these people standing next to you, you’re all on this same journey and all of a sudden, within an hour, you’ve gone from having no idea what you’re about to do to making something really beautiful. It’s a real sense of achievement and joy that comes from that.”

Next month, Jorgensen is touring Pub Choir to the UK and then the US. Audiences are different everywhere – even within Australia – but she has noticed more friendly teasing here, whereas in the US, audiences tend to look for praise. “In America, there’s a bit more of a singing culture, but they don’t laugh as much.”

She wants to celebrate making music, to show it’s something everyone can do and benefit from. “Everyone is good enough to try, everyone is good enough to have a lovely time. Life is fleeting and we need to let go of being the best.”

“It’s really low-key, high return, you can just do your thing and you’ll get carried by the crowd. It’s really nice to be not that important,” Jorgensen says. “No one can be the best at choir.”

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