Pop-Up at London Acapella Festival 2016 – gig report

YESSS! We had a fantastic time at London Acapella Festival. It was our first visit, and hopefully the first of many. *HINT HINT* *DO YOU THINK THEY GOT THAT* *GOD I WISH I’D GOT THE HASHTAG CORRECT THAT WAS EMBARRASSING*

We thought we were going to end up singing to an empty room when we arrived: Saturday morning! Death, surely? But by 11 the foyer and balconies at Kings Place was heaving, and it was an utter joy to sing to such an up for it crowd. Thanks to The Swingles, Kings Place and everyone at LAF for an amazing day with loads of great choirs and workshops: a total dream, basically.  It was also lovely to see choir friends from Twitter, especially the amazingly-named Gin and Harmonics (a collaboration has *got* to happen in 2016!)

Setlist
Lump (Presidents of the United States of America)
No Dollar (Aloe Blacc/Blackstreet)
Hey Ya (Outkast/Daft Punk)
Sweet Dreams (Eurythmics)
Shake It Off (Taylor Swift)

Here’s some of the great feedback we had. Roll on next year, and thanks for having us!

London A Capella Festival, January 30th – gig alert

The Pop-Up Choir singing at The Flicker Club's #skyhighcinema at The View From The Shard
The Pop-Up Choir’s ready to get going again

New term, new year, new gigs. We’re thrilled to announce that we are part of the seventh London A Capella Festival!

We are performing in the foyer of Kings Place on Saturday January 30 at 11am, so come and have some breakfast and songs with us. Afterwards we’ll head out into Kings Cross and do some pop-up sets, so it should be a great way to kickstart the weekend.

LACF is on from  28 to 30th and is run by the amazing The Swingles in conjunction with IKON Arts Management. There will be tons of workshops, amazing concerts and general joy, so definitely check it out. Some of our favourite groups are performing, including the spinetingling Tenebrae. Amazing!

See you then, and have a fabulous January.

Festive fun with The Pop-Up Choir!

BCB Winter Bash-23
Photograph by Joe Twigg at Brixton Base

At the Pop-Up Choir we do a lot of things – pop up at King’s Cross station to raise money for the Samaritans, provide vocal accompaniment on the Royal Festival Hall stage during a beat boxing – organ bonanza, our own Masters of Pop gigs… But, we don’t really do Christmas – not in the traditional choir sense anyway. We have a total of 2 (3?) Christmas songs in our repertoire that get reeled out about once a year when the right request comes in. We tend to have much more fun singing our regular pop/rock/soul/hip-hop repertoire.

This year when the fantastic folk at Brixton Community Base asked us to sing at their fundraising Christmas party, how could we say no? They do amazing work in the community in Brixton; from getting young people into the arts, to fun sporting activities, and managing a fantastic array of local community projects. They also frequently host our Pop-Up Choir Saturday workshops. We explained our non-Christmassy repertoire thing which they were more than happy with, so it was set.

We decided to combine the event with our own Christmas party (Christmas parties Pop-Up can do!), so the evening started in one of Brixton’s yummy eateries. A long table full of excited Poppers, decked out for the occasion in their finest reds, greens and Christmas jumpers, tucked into food and cocktails to gear us up for the evening ahead. We managed a very quick sound check on stage before moving to the stairwell for a quick rehearsal – decidedly more cosy than our regular outdoor pre-gig rehearsals!

Time to dust off those Christmas tunes and see how they sound. We got a little addicted to the joy and goosebumps brought on by the glorious sounding Carol of the Bells and just had to run through it one more time…Here’s how that sounded later on stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSNQlXHMfao

The event was wonderful; full of friendly people whose hearts are definitely in the right place – the community. We saw a scary film made by young people at Brixton Community Base, enjoyed singing along to some great live music and tried our luck in the fun raffle and auction. We were pretty happy with our set as well, and the audience also seemed to get into it. Many thanks to the fantastic Lisa for her excellent musical direction, and all our super-talented soloists!

The Pop-Up Christmas party then went on to less wholesome things of course – cocktails and dancing to our beloved 90s and noughties tunes elsewhere in Brixton.

So that’s a wrap for 2015 in Pop-Up land – we’re really excited about all the plans afoot for 2016 so stay tuned!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUB9iMhXb28&feature=youtu.be

The Pop-Up Choir seeks acapella Musical Director with a strong fun-loving personality to lead them!

 

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Formed in 2009, The Pop-Up Choir specialises in stylish and exciting pop covers. We sing a mix of high-energy crowd pleasers, indie classics and soul, including songs by Adele, Pulp, Mumford and Sons, Otis Redding and Taylor Swift.

We’ve sung at the Picturehouse Cinema’s sold-out Pitch Perfect 2 party at the Ritzy, with Shlomo at the Royal Festival Hall, and at the World’s Highest Cinema at The Top of the Shard, as well as at launches, events and our own gigs.

We rehearse in three terms through the year, and rehearsals take place 7-9pm on Tuesdays in Kennington, south London.

We are looking for a confident and dynamic London-based MD who…

  • Wants to lead an enthusiastic acapella pop choir
  • Specialises in contemporary acapella music and can quickly arrange fantastic SAAB arrangements (at least one per term)
  • Has a proven track record working with, and leading, acapella vocal groups
  • Can wrangle a 25-strong group of excitable 30-somethings through hard work and fun
  • Is happy teaching a range of learning levels: the choir is auditioned, but a good voice and can-do attitude are valued over sight-reading
  • Works on blend, tone and performance through exercises as well as practical singing
  • Is available for occasional gigs and Saturday morning workshops as well as our weekly sessions
  • Likes a tipple after rehearsal! (NB: tipple can be replaced by squash. Or crisps. We’re not picky.)

Administration duties are handled by members of The Pop-Up Choir and would not be part of the musical director’s role.

We arrange some gigs ourselves, but we would love our new MD to suggest other interesting opportunities and help us to make them amazing. The plan is to apply for festivals in 2016, after focusing on repertoire in 2015.

How to apply…

Please email thepopupchoir@gmail.com by Friday 8th Jan 2016 with the following information:

  • Cover letter explaining why you are interested in the role and what you would like to achieve with the choir
  • Your work history and a link to Soundcloud / Youtube to see some of your work if you have them
  • Titles of three songs that you could arrange that you think would complement our repertoire and a brief description of how they would work
  • Fee details

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to meet the choir and lead part of a rehearsal.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Find out more about us here:

Returning to the fold: Stokey Sessions

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Sarah Returns to the Pop-Up Choir after a rather looooong sabbatical. With just a few weeks under her belt, she is performing her first gig: “The Stokey Sessions” – yeah baby!

“Held in the resplendent Old Church in Stoke Newington – it was a small but perfectly formed venue. High ceilings, stone walls and general church like qualities equalled a lush, ethereal choral sound (as has been road tested by Aled Jones and Whoppi Goldberg), so good acoustics – check. Emma and Emily had done an excellent job of putting out all the candles so the place looked charmingly goth. The cherry on the top was an excellently carved pumpkin stationed at the cash register.

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Pre gig – we were upright sardines in a tiny room, doing a few sirens to warm up, massaging throats stretching out the muscles and chugging loads of water to hydrate the chords. The lovely Emma gave me some intense cramming tutelage just before the gig too – thank you Emma. I am realising the problem with singing sopranos is that if you go wrong you stand out like a wiry white hair – so basically I was a bit fearful of the evening.
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On stage I choose a strategically advantageous position of being in the back row, having not mastered the percussive element for Shake It Off by the fabulous Taylor Swift, (a clapping, stamping and clicking extravaganza) I was happy to be shielded by the folks on the front row.
The gig was fab and singing every song put a smile on my face – I have to admit I have a real a sweet spot for Heartbeats: when  Helen and Tom sing I get goose bumps. Shake It Off is like a being on a ride at the local fair not exactly sure what’s going, on but it’s just full of joy. Lump reminds me of the days of drinking White Lightening on the common and trying to snog boys…..ahhhh you have to love the tunes…..

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Thank you to the audience who were gorgeous and to the lovely choir master Chris who kept us on the straight and narrow – though I could never lip read from him what the next tune was so it was always a surprise for me, but I guess there’s nothing wrong with a little extra drama!”

Pop-Up Video: Sledgehammer on the 172 bus to Waterloo

Four members of the Pop-Up Choir at the Asylum in Peckham
Emily, Emma, Helen and Judy soaking up the sun in Peckham, shortly before unleashing Peter Gabriel JOY on the 172 back to the South Bank!

Thanks to everyone who came to Masters of Pop on Saturday – you were INCREDIBLE! Easily our favourite gig, possibly ever.

We were honoured to open the Camberwell Arts Festival for the second year running. The festival runs for the rest of this week and is packed with brilliant events, so check out the line-up.

Pictures, videos and behind the scenes joy to follow, including our warm-up gig at the amazing Camberwell Food and Arts Market. In the meantime, here’s a bunch of us doing a pop-up performance on the 172 to Waterloo. Can’t take us anywhere…

No passengers were harmed during the filming of this video.

https://youtu.be/XTSnIEX8z6k

Why we love Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off

Taylor Swift - Shake It Off
AMAZING Shake It Off composite by Sirens of Song

FOUR DAYS TO GO TIL MOP!

Chris arrived at choir to a great list of songs shortlisted by the choir – his choice? Shake It Off.

While the majority of singers were really excited at the prospect, there were quite a few eyebrows raised, and a few from people who hadn’t heard the song, and thought it was just going to be a piece of fairly cruddy bubblegum pop.

It’s testament both to Taylor Swift, and to Chris’s arrangement, that everyone, without exception, has come round to the joy of Shake It Off. It’s one of the most uplifting, joyous songs in our repertoire – and hell yes, we’ve kept the rap. And double hell yes, it’s like Clueless never happened.

We can’t wait to sing it for you on Saturday at Masters of Pop. It went down a storm when we sang it at the Ritzy’s preview  screening of Pitch Perfect 2 , and we’ll be bringing extra joy to it this weekend.

See you there!

Masters of Pop, Saturday 20 June, 8pm, St Giles Church, Camberwell Church Street, SE5

Tickets are £10 on the door, £8 in advance here.

Gigs this weekend: Pitch Perfect 2 @ Ritzy Cinema and Voices Now @ The Roundhouse

The Pop-Up Choir

This weekend!

  • Saturday 9 May: Picturehouse Podcast’s 5th birthday party screening of PITCH PERFECT 2 at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton – tickets and info here! We’ll be debuting a take on Taylor Swift that the Bellas would be proud of.
  • Sunday 10 May: Voices Now festival at the Roundhouse in Camden.
    3.30pm Camden Markets stage
    5.30pm Roundhouse bar
    Follow us on Twitter @thepopupchoir for our exact location.

Hope to see you there – and don’t forget, tickets for our a capella extravaganza MASTERS OF POP this June are now on sale.

Gig update! Masters of Pop with The Buzztones and Tina C – June 20th

Masters of Pop The Pop-Up Choir June 20th 2015

Oh it’s on, acabitches!
Kick-ass a capella choirs? Check.
Catchy, clever pop covers? Check.
Brilliant compere? Check.

8pm, Saturday 20 June, St Giles Church, Camberwell – it’s MASTERS OF POP!

Roll up, roll up, get your tickets here

 
From Taylor Swift to Nineties classics, South London a capella favourites The Pop-Up Choir are back with more pop with attitude in one of Camberwell’s most atmospheric and beautiful venues.

Under the direction of MD Christopher Bland (Out of the Blue, The Oxford Alternotives), we’re ready to bring it, with new songs, bigger sets  and a really good bar. And just to make sure it’s brought, we’ve lined up some extra-special guest acts who share our love of pop-up pop.

THE BUZZTONES!
The all-male Buzztones have done flashmob proposals (successfully!) and performed on BBC One and at the FA Cup Final. Singing everything from Lady Gaga to Eye of the Tiger, this group of treblemakers are never less than electrifying.

CAMBERWELL COMMUNITY CHOIR!
Upbeat, tight-knit and fantastic, CCC are proof of the power of singing. They’ve sound-tracked silent films, performed in a play at the Young Vic, and sung for King’s College Hospital staff.

…and compered by musical comedy superstar, TINA C.!
From BBC Radio 4 to the Sydney Opera House, the country music ‘legend’ has taken her brilliant act around the world to five-star reviews. Just don’t ask her about that time she tried to take the White House.

“Christopher Green’s Tina C. is one of the great comic creations of the age. A genuinely fine country singer, but with a twist of satire and insight which is rare and to be highly prized.” Stephen Fry

Last year was a sell out with over 400 people packed in the aisles (and doing the hokey-cokey!) and 2015 is going to be our biggest and best Masters of Pop yet.

Buy tickets now!  £10 on the door, and £8 in advance – and £7 early bird tickets are on sale now!

Gig update: Pitch Perfect 2 at the Ritzy: it’s on, acabitches!

Pitch Perfect 2: The Pop-Up Choir will be singing at the Ritzy's preview screening. Hurray!
Pitch Perfect 2: The Pop-Up Choir will be singing at the Ritzy’s preview screening. Hurray!

We’re thrilled to announce that we will be singing at Picturehouse Podcast‘s 5th birthday screening of the a capella comedy Pitch Perfect 2 next Saturday.

Our perfect gig? HELL YES.

If you didn’t see the first film, get on it. Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson star, and it’s about college-level a capella groups. In Pitch Perfect 2 their group, the Barden Bellas, hit the big leagues: more songs, more snark and more cameos. Keep an eye out for Pentatonix and Tobias from Arrested Development as an insanely rich acafan.

If you love a capella and laughing a lot, this was basically made for you. It was certainly made for us. See you there, and congratulations to Sam and Simon on five excellent podcasting years!

Saturday May 9, 9.30pm, £12.60/£11.60, less for members. Buy tickets here.