Origin From : Vocal Blog
Author : Juliana Baron
Date : 2015.09.15
Every moment is just so special – Juliana’s first-hand impressions of the Vocal Asia Festival 2015
by Juliana Baron, Vocal Blog Asia, September 2015
Last month, the Shanghai Mass Arts Center was hosting the 2015 Vocal Asia Festival (VAF) – here comes part 2 of my first-hand impressions:
Day 2: Aren’t we all a little crazy in this big ACA family?
Thursday (Aug 6) started with the A Cappella Summit Forum. Representatives from Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore and Hongkong presented their status of A Cappella development.
Deke Sharon talked about his experience and the success of a growing popularity of a cappella in the US and in other regions of the world. Clare Chen, the president of Vocal Asia, shared her dream and mission of supporting a cappella in Asia, as well as linking and networking all over the world. Special guest was Peter Lane, president and CEO of the Walton Arts Center in Arkansas, who started last year with a professional a cappella festival called „VoiceJam“, hosted by Deke Sharon.
Main topic was sharing ideas of linking and connecting the different regions together, and finally come closer and exchange between the continents.
Finally, Vocal Asia’s educational consultant Sung-Mo Han presented a profound education concept for A Cappella and spontaneously demonstrated a method of teaching and singing without scores. The simplicity and effectiveness stunned even the pro’s amongst the audience.
After lunch, hurray, the workshop sessions started! The full program of the festival can be found on Vocal Asia. As there were always three lectures in parallel, you had to decide on your favorite topic which was by far not easy with all the good lecturers and interesting workshops. After joining the workshop „A Cappella arranging in 10 steps“ by Deke Sharon, which makes it sound so easy to arrange, I headed to the Single Singers’ first rehearsal.
Christine Liu, music director and alto of Voco Novo, brought the Single Singers’ concept from the London A Cappella Festival to VAF. When she entered the rehearsal place, she seemed to be shocked and overwhelmed at the same time. We were supposed to sing in a group of 20 people who applied for the workshop in advance. But Christine was facing about 50 excited and curious single singers. Well, the shocking part about it was how to balance the voices and how to make all of us ready to perform on the VAF Concert the next day. First half of our rehearsal, we needed to organize enough copies of the scores, split into the different voice parts, discuss whether to transpose both of the songs and of course, get to know each other. Christine having a hard time to get the excited chattering and giggling noise down. Our first trial was horrifying, but we all loved Christine for smiling at us, being so positive and motivating. „Will you have some time tonight to practice before our last rehearsal tomorrow?“ I think we were all crazy deciding to go for 2 songs, but aren’t we all a little crazy in this big ACA family?
Highlight of day 2 for sure was my Interview with Naturally 7 for the Vocal Blog. You can get an idea of how outstanding these 7 artists are. You will definitely fall for them when you hear them live, but not only when they are performing, also behind the scenes, they are just so down-to-earth and warm-hearted personalities – you can’t help but fall in love with them.
In the last workshop session of this day „Urbanized A Cappella“ the Naturally 7 members talked about their background and gave some examples of their musical journey. Unfortunately, half of the participants – and so did I – had to leave in the middle of the workshop to hurry to the first ACA Day concert in another location.
