Neil Nongkynrih conductor and founder of Shillong Chamber Choir shares a light moment with his singers
The Shillong Chamber Choir recently had a first-of-its-kind personalised concert in Mumbai
Winners of reality show India’s Got Talent season 2, the Shillong Chamber Choir has performed in several cities across the country and also entertained India’s first lady Pratibha Patil and the US President Barack Obama. But when they decided to give their first public performance in Mumbai on April 7, they did things differently. They opted to have a first-of-its-kind personalised concert wherein they would perform songs that were requested by their fans on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Neil Nongkynrih, conductor and founder of the choir said, “Usually, the first act is programmed wherein we perform songs of our choice and the second act is quite informal where audience members shout out aloud and ask us to sing us their favourite songs. So this time we asked the producers to use the same concept but in a more organised way.”
Fans could send in their requests a fortnight before the concert and on last count just two hours before the concert, the choir had received over 1,000 requests. Topping the list were hit Bollywood songs like Ajeeb dastaan hai yeh, Kal ho naa ho and Chhoti si asha. Nongkynrih said that rather than performing all of them, they decided to turn the concert into a perfect blend of audience requests as well as innovative pieces like a piano and tabla jugalbandi, a piano and rock-inspired jugalbandi, Mozart’s Queen of the night and a special dedication to pop icon Freddie Mercury.
He explained, “After every show, a huge number of fans request songs that they would like to hear us play. Most of the time we sing a few requests, but with Facebook and Twitter acting as our request lists, we could sing exactly what the Mumbai audience wanted us to sing. If listeners get to select the songs they want to hear, then they will be more engaged. We thought of dedicating a song to Freddie Mercury as he hailed from a Parsi family that was originally from Mumbai.”
Well-known for their jazz, classic rock, popular English, Bollywood and Western classical renditions, the Shillong Chamber Choir was set up in 2001 and comprises 22 members ranging from 15 to 30 years. The group customises their performances according to the venue. For instance, for a recent performance at Chennai, the choir performed Tamil songs including the super-hit Chinna chinna aasai (the original of Chhoti si asha) while in China last year, they rendered couple of Chinese compositions.
Shom Jagtiani, chief operating officer of Indigo Live, which promoted the event in Mumbai, said, “All the best bands have begun using social media to promote their music these days. Clever marketing has always been just as important as having great music. Rather than organising just events, we believe in conducting personalised concerts that helps the audience to interact more with the performers.” With the advent of the Internet and social media sites, personalised concerts might just be the next big thing in the music world.
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