He smiles, as he remembers the Pop and Rock concert the Coimbatore Chamber Chorale (CCC) performed in October last year. “We were trying something new and it worked. The applause was great and we had fun toying with melodies we had not worked with before,” says Faith Ragland, mentor and conductor of the choir. The fund-raising concert was sold out and, Ragland says, they still hear good reviews about it.
Ragland is a trained classical violinist and cellist who gathered a bunch of musicians together in 2011. “I started the choir in 2011 to promote and create awareness about choral singing in both art and church music. It helped that I had many friends who were all interested in symphony music,” he says.
So far the CCC has performed Mozart, Beatles, Bach, Hallelujah, Stephen Sondheim and Beethoven. What began as a choral society has turned a new page and is venturing into unexplored territories. “We started CCC as a passion project and had to push for publicity in the initial days. But within the first year itself our choir was appreciated for taking Western Classical Music out of the church and making it accessible to the audience. Now we are recognised,” he says.
Having toured Bengaluru, Chennai and other cities, Ragland says, “We have explored musicals, poetry and more recently pop and rock.” The fact that the choir is made up of musicians as young as 10 and as old as 62, adds so much depth and width . “The young ones are very easy to work with while the old ones bring in their expertise to the choir.” CCC is the first choir from Coimbatore to have cleared the Silver Choral Assessment by Trinity College of London (TCL). Ragland says, “We have successfully explained it to the masses that there is more to western classical music than what is sung in the church. We want to make choir music more inclusive.”
In 2015, Coimbatore Chamber Chorale collaborated with the Vienna University Orchestra and Choir. “The conductor there Vijay Upadhyay travelled with us for tours around India and now it was our turn. And the experience was phenomenal. The way the audience receives classical musical in the west is astounding,” he recalls. “They just would not stop applauding, even after 15 minutes,” he recounts and says that experience is a heady one for an artiste.
In Coimbatore itself, things could be much better says Ragland. “Lack of good concert spaces and then patronage is something that we have a tough time with always.
We could be buzzing with ideas but the issue of funding holds us back sometimes,” Ragland says. Art recognition, appreciation, and promotion seems to be a problem with the whole of India, according to him. He feels introduction to as many art forms as possible, right from the school level is a solution that could work.
In April 2017, 10 CCC members will travel to Bengaluru to perform with the India National Youth Orchestra (INYO). The choir looks forward to doing more in the field of symphonies and expanding their current base.
Ragland says, “We want to travel more and create more awareness about choirs. Any form of appreciation from the audience is an encouragement to us and will fuel us to carry on.”
