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BR: About fifteen years ago, when you started Choir! Choir! Choir, what was the vision? And did you ever imagine that it would grow into what it is today?

Nobu Adilman: When we first started doing choir, there was no vision whatsoever. It was really just an idea to hang out with our friends in the winter, when people don’t generally see each other as much. It was as simple as that. There was no plan. I’d never been in a choir before. It was really just about getting our friends together.

You’ve built a space where people don’t need musical experience or perfection. Why was making this accessible to everyone important to you?

Daveed Goldman: I don’t think that was necessarily the point of the project. We were just gathering people who couldn’t necessarily read music. It wasn’t really to start a choir. That was not the objective. As Nobu said, it was just to get together and sing some songs, create a bit of harmony in the room. All that was really required was that people had a love of music, were okay to sing in front of their friends, and were not ashamed to do that. … Certainly in the early years of choir, we would push that as far as we could go, and when we pushed it too far, we’d pull it back. But it was about trying to get the most musically out of people who aren’t necessarily musicians, and to show people that they could be a part of something larger than themselves and create something harmonic without that musical training. 

Adilman: I would add to that, Choir! Choir! Choir! is really a DIY kind of project that we started from the ground up. For me, it was based on things that I did with my friends, whether it’s music or food or anything. I’m not really into this whole credentialed perspective. I like the idea of being a professional amateur, and that anybody can do whatever they want to do, whether it’s building a house or making a Michelin-starred meal or anything like that. If you care about something, then you can do it. You just have to figure out how to do it for yourself and what makes sense. And I think that over the years, Daveed and I, without really knowing how to create a choir, have just responded to very specific things that are right in front of us. Okay, how are we going to get everyone to sing this part? How are we going to create harmonies that people can get? How are we going to get more people in the room so that more people can enjoy it, including ourselves? When you take things in tiny little increments, it becomes something. If it’s the right thing, you’re on the right path.

How do you decide which songs make the setlist?

Adilman: Well, for the first eight years, we were meeting twice weekly in bars and art galleries and spaces around Toronto. Mostly, that was the gig. And so every Thursday, David and I would have a conversation about songs we’d been thinking about doing. At the beginning, it was songs that were simpler, a little bit harmonically and melodically. But then, as you said, we’ve been doing this for fifteen, sixteen years. It changed when we started touring the world, and the show changed. We’re going to do a whole bunch of songs, like ten songs over the course of the night. And then we figure out, well, what are the biggest songs in the world that people will come to the show pretty much knowing? If they know the band or if they know the era, they’ll be pretty familiar with the songs, because we don’t want to be teaching them how to sing the song and then trying to apply harmonies to it.

How would you describe one of your shows to someone who’s never attended?

Goldman: At the end of the day, we’re like animators, and we do whatever we have to do to get the audience to give of themselves as much as they possibly can. Sometimes it’s easier than others, and sometimes it’s harder. But at the end of the day, what we try to do is get people in the audience to be as active as possible and to get into the emotion of whatever song we’re singing. If we’re singing a party song, then great, get up and clap. We just get people to sweat and move and sing and not be so afraid. … So I just think our show is about coming and being willing to be vulnerable in front of other people, because ultimately we understand that for people in the audience, it requires this leap sometimes to be willing to do that. If you’re willing to do that, then I think you can get a lot out of our show, because it’s really just about people leaving feeling a little bit different than the way they felt when they came in, and understanding, oh, I can do these kinds of things in front of people, and maybe I should do more things that involve other people, a communal experience, which there’s less of today. So I think it’s a pure communal experience, creating something with people you don’t know and leaving there, hopefully feeling a little bit better about the world around you. I don’t know, maybe. Music is the tool.

Adilman: I would add to that, Choir! Choir! Choir! is like a house party with better lighting, with a whole rig and better sound. Everyone’s invited, and you don’t have to prepare at all for anything. You just show up, and it’s like playing games, in a way, singing songs the way that we do our show. It’s just activating, activating, activating, trying to draw people out and to share with each other, because the world is a scary place and people get really protective. Choir Choir Choir is a space where everyone can just open up, and we just say, listen, be your truest self, and we’ll do the rest.

How has performing for audiences around the world impacted the way you view what you’re building with Choir! Choir! Choir!?

Adilman: For me, it’s really opened the door. I’ve always thought that music is a communication device, but you really learn that when you go to different countries where English is not the first language, and you have to try to communicate with them, we really do it through the songs. You haven’t really lived until you’ve done a show in Milan, which we did recently, in a heavy metal club with a bunch of people who don’t speak English in their everyday lives. That is just such an incredible experience. You learn how to meet people where they are. And you also learn that people are very similar all over the world. They need the same things to exist, and they want the same things. They crave similar things. It’s beautiful to see that Choir Choir Choir can come into places all over the world and create that kind of community that we first felt in Toronto.

Goldman: I would say that when 2020 hit, and COVID hit, we were riding a little bit of a high. And then it was hard for us not to feel like what we do is not important, because in some ways live performance was the first thing to go. People were performing at drive-ins, and we were people that got people singing in a room, which is the worst thing to do with the spread of this thing. So within a month or two of COVID hitting, I think we were in a dark place, wondering what we really do. But then, as it went on and we came back and started playing shows again, it became clear that what we do is important in a way that I don’t think we really felt before. I think we took it for granted. We all took certain things for granted before. And we’ve seen the connectivity of people disappear over the last five or six years, sadly, just because of what’s been happening. So it’s nice to create that space that connects people again in some way, even if for a couple of hours. It feels to me more important now than it did before, which is a nice feeling after that dark time, which is now over six years ago. I can’t believe it. But yeah.

Adilman: Music is a cliché, but music is a universal language. You could be anywhere in the world, and a song can come on the radio, and you start dancing, you look over, and somebody smiles at you, and they start dancing. Next thing you know, you have a dance party on the subway system or wherever, in a public space. That’s the way I feel about Choir Choir Choir as we’ve started to go to different places around the world.

Your Un-silent Night tour starts soon, and it’s kicking off in Vancouver’s Vogue Theatre. How are you feeling?

Adilman: Un-Silent Night, it’s kind of funny, because I did not celebrate Christmas or really anything growing up. I come from a fairly unreligious household. So to do a holiday, Christmas-type show took me a while to understand. But now that we’ve done it a few years, I really look forward to it. It’s a really fun show. There’s something about that time of year where people’s shoulders come down, whether it’s their family or their chosen family they’re with, and they just want to unwind, and you really feel it from the crowd. So I’m excited. It’s a fun, beautiful, warm, fuzzy show. It’s a beautiful time, so I’m looking forward to it. David, what do you say about that?

Goldman: I remember we did a holiday show in New York a few years ago, and we thought, how is this really going to work? I think we didn’t know quite how to approach it. But now we’ve really dialed in the vibe of our holiday show. To Nobu’s point, I look forward to it. I know the vibes that are in the room and the smiles on people’s faces and the multi-generational people in attendance. There are grandparents with grandchildren, and children up on stage. The vibes are so strong, and we just get to be in the middle of it, which is so fun for us because we like to just play on stage. It’s such a playful time of year. For us, it’s so naturally celebratory that we just get to be almost like kids up on stage and be silly and fun. It’s our funnest time of year for sure. That month is probably the lightest, funnest time of year.

Adilman: So it’s the most funnest time of the year. In some ways, for me anyway, it feels like cosplay on some level, because there’s all this larger-than-life Christmassy vibe around the show. I feel like I’m walking into a literal wonderland that is foreign, but also something I know so well. It’s pretty fun to be a bit of a marauder into other people’s rituals as well, and to get to experience what they’ve experienced. At our holiday show, people’s eyes roll back into their heads because you can feel the memories of holidays past rolling through. And with these songs, though I don’t necessarily feel the same thing that they might be feeling, I appreciate that they’re feeling it, and then I get to experience it as well. So that’s pretty cool.

Goldman: When we started, as I said before, we would do songs that we liked and that we agreed upon … but then we got to the point where we had done a hundred of these nights, which didn’t take that long because we did it so often, that we started picking songs thinking, let’s just do songs, whether or not they’re our favorite songs, it doesn’t matter. When we saw how much it meant to the people that were coming out, we thought, they’re so excited to be singing this song that we would just naturally get excited. It pushed us to get into different kinds of music, and we kind of grew in some ways at that time. We didn’t grow up with these songs. Neither of us grew up in a household that sang any of these songs or had these traditions. And yet it’s fun how you can evolve as a person, and how at this point in our lives, we can celebrate these things. It’s a nice feeling of connectivity to end the year off. It definitely feels like the vibes are right at this show, and people let us know that.

Adilman: A cool thing about Choir! Choir! Choir! that I experienced from pretty much the early days is that when you’re younger, music can be really character-defining. … One time David suggested we do the Smiths. I hated the Smiths in high school. They represented a whole whiny outlook on life that I thought just sucked. I was really biased against the Smiths, and I completely lost out on that whole breadth of all of their music and what they were doing. Then we did “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,” and all my biases went out the window. I loved the song. So we often say to people, don’t worry about whether thirty years ago or twenty years ago or even ten years ago you didn’t like this song or this band. When you sing together with other people, you rediscover the music in a totally different way. You feel it in a different way. And people often walk away going, actually, I like that song now. So that’s a cool thing about what happens at Choir! Choir! Choir!

Are there any holiday songs that hold special meaning for either of you, or ones you never get tired of singing?

Goldman: That’s a good question. We obviously have played these songs at Choir! Choir! Choir!. We’ve been doing Choir! Choir! Choir! for over fifteen years. We both like songs that are very pretty and melodic. We tend to agree on those things. So of course, something like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is such a classic, beautiful, simple, pretty melody. I’ve always loved that song. So we knew these songs. We just didn’t listen to them in the home. We didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas. But I’ve always loved “Silent Night,” just melodically. There are so many great melodies in these songs, so singable. So it’s fun to be able to finally celebrate them for sure. “Silent Night” is definitely one of the ones that I’ve always loved.

Adilman: I was the kid in the schoolyard, when I was in elementary school, telling all the other kids that Santa didn’t exist, because I thought, “what’s wrong with you guys? This is ridiculous.” But then I would go over and play with their toys in the afternoon on Christmas Day. But the idea of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” and that it’s pretty magical when you wake up on December twenty-fifth, even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, if it’s snowing, you think, that’s for you Christians. You got your snow, good for you guys. Even despite not celebrating that holiday, I’m happy for Christians when they get snow on Christmas Day. I like that song. And as Jews, we go for Chinese food.

As Choir! Choir! Choir! continues to evolve, what are some new experiences or directions you’d love to take the project in?

Adilman: Oh, the tough questions begin now.

Goldman: We’ve been lucky enough to partner with and perform with some great musicians. We just recently did a night with Sarah McLachlan, and we’ve been on stage with Kermit the Frog. We’ve done some cool things, like David Byrne and people like that. It’d be fun to partner with more musicians and create more experiences connecting fans of an artist to them, allowing fans to be like a backup singer or choir with these people. That’s always something we want to be doing. …. If we’re able to make people smile and laugh and sing and break down barriers over the next several years doing this project, that will be better than any. That’s the ultimate goal of it, I guess, at the end of the day.

Adilman: I agree with Daveed about more collaborations, because what’s so beautiful when we get to team up with a musician of some regard is that we become the bridge between fans and the artists, and everyone gets to collaborate together. People at the Sarah McLachlan show said, yeah, I collaborated with Sarah McLachlan, and that’s such a beautiful thing, that we get to share what we do with everybody. So definitely that. I think our experience with Choir Choir Choir has been so full of surprises … we’ve gone from dive bars in Toronto to singing the national anthem at the Grey Cup to performing with all those people that Daveed mentioned, to getting to perform at Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall with all these incredible musicians that we grew up listening to and loving. They were our idols, and we got to perform on stage with them. Around every corner there are all these surprises. If anything, it’s motivation to keep going. But also this idea that no matter what you do, if you keep at it and you keep infusing your passion and your creativity, looking for answers to try to figure something out, having goals that are way too outside of your realm, you know that it’s all possible. Who knows, it’s all a crapshoot. You never know what’s going to happen. But based on the very weird route that we’ve gone, because there’s no control with any of it, you just have to try to make the best decisions. I just hope that at every point it keeps growing in an interesting, exciting way, and we get to experience more of these things, because it’s truly unpredictable where this road will take us.

Goldman: … to Nobu’s point, we’ve put a lot of work into it, and we never stopped. We could have, but we just never did. It’s shown me that if you work hard at something and you just keep working at it, opportunities will present themselves. You just have to keep going and keep pushing. 

Adilman: I would add that it’s a lofty goal, and some people would call it idealistic, but something very beautiful about our jobs is that almost every night we get to walk into a theater and have people sing together and laugh together and truly settle into each other. Every night we get to create a sense of community in that room. For a brief moment of time, ninety minutes, one hundred minutes, it feels like everything’s safe, everything’s creative. People are holding each other. They’re laughing, they’re crying, they’re dancing. It’s a beautiful life. So my lofty goal is that that vibe just spreads and the world can feel more like that more often, because it’s stressful and it’s hard out there.

Goldman: The idea of continuing to explore and play and create those communities as an adult is just so important. I have two little kids, and the amount of work that we put in to nurture their friendships, and we’re taking them to play sports, and they’re going to do this. I think as you get older, you lose those opportunities. We used to have more of them. But now, because we have phones, there’s less opportunity for that connectivity, and community spaces and things like that go away. … If you’re someone who has a gift that can bring people together in any way, it doesn’t have to be Choir! Choir! Choir!, getting two thousand people singing at Carnegie. It could be ten people in a room doing pottery on Wednesday night. … So if we can be an inspiration to anyone to get together as a group and sing once a week and try a different bottle of wine every week and sing ten songs and have a glass of wine you never had before, even that can lead to other things. …. People just need to stay connected and maintain friendships and community. It’s so important.

Adilman: I think the true enemy out there is the algorithm, because the algorithm is strong, it’s scientific, and it is engineered to steer us away from our human instincts. It’s taking away our gut, and trusting your gut is everything. … So I feel like it’s really tough out there to figure out your sense of community when you’re battling that all the time. I wouldn’t say throw your phone away, but do your best to fight against the algorithm. And I know I’m trying.

Goldman: It’s very hard. When we started in 2011, Facebook was still in many ways much more innocent. Facebook and YouTube were relatively new, and people were rediscovering old friendships. There were Facebook groups where we were able to build this project. We could access them, people could join, and if they wanted to leave, they could leave. People had this agency to be part of this group if they wanted to, and people really did. …. But over the last years, through social media, we’ve seen firsthand the shift, because we’ve run this project through Facebook and Instagram and YouTube, and we started to see that it’s changing the way we’re able to run our group. It’s not allowing us to access our community in the same way. It is what it is. They’re businesses and they’re being run, but the way that they make money has changed dramatically, to the point now where we have half a million followers on Facebook and we literally cannot access them unless we pay. It used to be that we would post something and people would see it, because the whole point was that we would be able to access them. But it slowly started to change and we realized that we weren’t in control of it anymore. There are other forces at play. It’s pretty nefarious. We’ve definitely seen the evolution of that. It’s disheartening, but, to what I said before, it makes what we do in that room feel even more important now. If we can get people in that room for two hours and get them to engage in that way, it matters even more, because they’re not getting that connectivity through these things that are supposed to be connecting them.

Adilman: But back to what David was saying, join that group, join that book club, join that album of the week or month club, go to Trampoline Hall and listen to people speak. Toronto is so great for live events, and really fun ones. At Trampoline Hall, I think once a month, three people deliver lectures on subjects that they’re not experts in. There are all these opportunities to do these things. They’re still around, so go out and support them.

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