S1 E09: From Denmark with Love — Early IOC Director Paul Kim
Edited by Fausto Daos
Music Excerpts
Watch What Happens, by Michel Legrande, arr. by Paul Kim
Kære Farmor (Dear Grandma), lyrics & music by Sys Bjerre, arr. by Nenia Zenana
Laudate Dominum, by Vagn Holmboe
What a Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong, arr. by Kat Romhild
Theme Song: Mr. Puffy by Avi Bortnik, arr. by Paul Kim. Performed by Dynamic
Episode transcript
Intro [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to In Unison, the podcast for choral conductors, composers and choristers, where we interview members of our choral community to talk about new music, new and upcoming performances, and discuss the interpersonal and social dynamics of choral organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. We are your hosts. I am Zane Fiala, artistic director of the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco. And I'm Giacomo DiGrigoli, a tenor in IOCSF, the Golden Gate Men's Chorus and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. And this is In Unison!
Zane [00:00:44] Straight out of Copenhagen, this week we're chatting with Paul Kim, a founding director of IOCSF and currently director of Danish vocal jazz group Dynamic, about Denmark's response to COVID and how his professional and community groups have responded to the pandemic. Joining us today on the podcast is Paul Kim. Paul Kim is currently living just outside of Copenhagen, working as a freelance choir director and church singer in the local church. His main gigs right now are two chamber choirs and amateur opera company, a professional jazz vocal band, which is called Dynamic, we'll talk more about that later, and a series of gospel workshops, along with helping out the music director at the local church. He's sung with pretty much all of the top semi pro choirs in Copenhagen. And he's been there in Denmark for about 10 years now. But before that, which is where I met him, he lived in San Francisco and at that time was a director for IOCSF, the Chalice Consort, and also the assistant director for the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. Paul received his Masters of Music in Choral Conducting from San Francisco State University under the tutelage of Dr. Joshua Habermann, who we did talk to just recently. And in a past life, Paul was a programmer and project manager and studied electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley. Welcome, Paul. Did I miss anything?
Paul [00:02:08] No, it sounds pretty comprehensive. Great to be here, Zane!
Zane [00:02:11] Thanks for joining us.
Paul [00:02:13] Yeah, my pleasure.
Giacomo [00:02:14] Paul, it's so good to have you! It was quite a year. What's... what's something you learned about yourself as a choir director and as a musician in 2020 that maybe surprised you?
Paul [00:02:25] Uh... Some of the things that I learned... Well, first of all, I found out that there's some skills that I needed to have as a choir director that I didn't realize that I needed to have before, which is putting together some videos for my choir. And so I had to edit those things together. Then I found out how to sort of shoot some videos for my choir as well, and... and then just be a video choir director from time to time. Find out how that's different from actually just standing in front of a group of people and helping them sing. It's a completely different sort of mindset and skill set to be able to try and make a choir continue to function online, as they say.
Giacomo [00:03:08] It's a little bit of a literal trial by fire, right? You sort of have to learn...
Paul [00:03:12] Yeah...
Giacomo [00:03:12] ... Because there are no other options [laughter]. And we're... it's so funny. We were talking yesterday about Schütz and where sort of lots of these random compositions would come from for like two French horns and an oboe and a sackbut. And we're like, "What? Why in the world would you choose that?" And it turns out that it was because it was sort of in the midst of a plague or something where it was literally the only instrumentalists he had.
Zane [00:03:35] Right! [laughter]
Giacomo [00:03:35] "Great. You people are still alive and we'll figure something out...
Zane [00:03:41] ...in the face of it."
Paul [00:03:41] Also, Messiaen had a bunch of interesting chamber ensembles also because of World War Two,.
Zane [00:03:49] Oh yeah...
Paul [00:03:49] And that was the players that he had. The wars... the wars and the plague's adversity has really brought out some extra creativity from the people that survived through them and continue to flourish.
Zane [00:04:03] Yeah!
Paul [00:04:04] But one of the things that I've been able to do, because some of my work has been canceled, still canceled or just on hiatus. So I have a little more free time than I used to have. And certainly I have a lot more time at home because some of the things that I do are not, you know, they're... they're from home now. So I have less appointments. Uh... So some of the resolutions that I've made are to improve some skills that I always wanted to have. Like, I started to sort of self teach myself the drums. [laughter]
Zane [00:04:39] Oh!
Paul [00:04:40] Just to improve my rhythmic sensibility. And then I also got into video making, partly from having to create some videos for my choirs. And... and I thought I'd get a lot further into that. And then I just have a sort of a C-priority resolution to attack my C-priority list [laughter], which has been C priority for like so many years now. And I was looking at the, you know... I was just thinking about what are some of the things that I've been kicking down the road for year after year and this is... this is the year to actually get them done.
Zane [00:05:22] Yeah...
Paul [00:05:22] Playing... playing drums was one of them, actually. [laughter]
Zane [00:05:26] That's wild? Like drum set? Like a kit?
Paul [00:05:29] Right now, I've... I've actually set up a cajón with some cymbals and a kick... kick pedal so that I can have it be all sort of in miniature. But... but I play... I don't play anything cajón-like. I basically just been using the cajón to simulate having a full kit and then just trying to incorporate that into when my wife is practicing guitar, when she's singing and doing some stuff like that.
Zane [00:05:57] That's awesome! I want to get a cajón actually. It's on my list of musical instruments to add to my collection, because when I was... when I was first, you know, I started as a piano player when I was very young, like four years old, my mom started me playing piano and taking lessons. And then when I got to elementary school and you reached that grade where they're like, "OK, it's time to join the band and you gotta pick a band instrument." I wanted to play the drums. And so I told my mom, "I want to be a drummer. I want to play the drums." So I got a little practice pad and a pair of sticks, but I just... my parents didn't push me down the road with a teacher or anything right away, and I just didn't pursue it. And so I just became a trumpet player instead. But I've always wanted to play the drums and I've tried. [laughter from Giacomo] But I got to tell you, I don't quite have the forelimb coordination for a full kit. Not quite.
Paul [00:06:50] Oh... For some things, I sound like I'm, you know, I can at least competently hold down a medium swing. But man! For... for some Latin stuff, it really... it literally sounds like it's four people in the room [laughter from Zane] that can't see or hear each other just trying to play something. [laughter]
Zane [00:07:07] So it's like four people playing drums over Zoom. [laughter]
Paul [00:07:11] [laughter] Exactly! Exactly.
Zane [00:07:13] Oh, my God.
Giacomo [00:07:14] So, Paul, I mean, this... this is probably pretty obvious for some of the folks who are listening, but, um, your need to sort of learn the video sort of technology and streaming technology... to what end? Why were you sort of learning all of these new tools? What were you using all of the new video editing tools for?
Paul [00:07:33] Well, one of the first things that I saw when the pandemic hit was that a lot of people started creating those, you know, multihead Brady Bunch-style choir videos with a bunch of floating heads synchronized to sing something together.
Giacomo [00:07:52] Ah, yes... the virtual choir.
Paul [00:07:52] And I thought, "Well, I should figure out... Yeah. So I should figure out how to do that, too." And so I started downloading some... some software and experimenting around with the cameras that I had. I figured out how to do that and probably would like to do something with a little bit higher quality camera and a little bit higher quality audio.
Giacomo [00:08:13] Here's a bit of audio from one of these new video projects. Let's listen to a bit of Dynamic performing "Watch What Happens" [00:08:18] [Music excerpt: a jazz trio of drums, electric guitar and bass play before a female soloist sings "You've got to let someone start believing in you"].
Paul [00:08:19] And so one thing led to another to try and figure out just how to get the videos to look a little sleeker. And then I realized, "Oh, I can actually make actual videos of my choirs and any of my jazz group instead of just having the Brady Bunch-style." And so that's sort of where I am right now, just starting... just starting my little journey on trying to figure out how to make music videos. So I created a few for one of the choirs that I sing... that I conduct. And then I have... We've started to shoot some different videos for my jazz group. And we're in the process of figuring out how to edit the footage together right now.
Zane [00:09:24] How do you feel about the Brady Bunch-style virtual choir?
Giacomo [00:09:28] I mean, now that you've been through it, yeah?
Paul [00:09:32] [laughter] I like it. It's... you know, there's a... As with a lot of things, there's a massive spectrum of quality that you can have. And as with also a lot of things, to do something at a really high quality requires a lot more effort and a lot more organization. But I'm starting to see also evidence of that as well. Where, at the beginning of the pandemic, you know, just any bunch of heads that would show up on the screen singing something that was sort of the same was good enough. And everybody was happy about that.
Paul [00:10:03] As the technology and the skill level has increased throughout, the competency has increased throughout the pandemic. So has the expectation. And so I think now people are expecting something better and better and the organization is getting better and better. Oh, Zane! Let's see.... I know that the International Orange Carol is working on that, the latest virtual choir video. And I think that's a huge step forward just from what I've seen at the organization from the previous virtual choir video.
Zane [00:10:35] Oh yeah.
Paul [00:10:35] And I have also seen that experience with Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. I was a part of their most recent virtual choir video as well which...
Zane [00:10:45] That's so cool.
Paul [00:10:47] Yeah...
Zane [00:10:48] Aside from that... the Interfaith Gospel Choir... Are there any other virtual choir performances that you've seen that you're particularly impressed by?
Paul [00:10:57] Well, first of all, the one of the top groups who are doing this kind of stuff in Denmark is the Danish Radio Girls Chorus...
Zane [00:11:07] Oh!
Paul [00:11:07] And the Danish Radio Girls Chorus has been doing a lot of really nice videos where they've just put together all the members on the screen. And maybe it's just because the girls are a little more hip to... how to record themselves correctly on a phone that it looks... looks and sounds a little bit better [laughter]. And when you get a group of adults to do it for the first time ever [laughter from Zane]...
Zane [00:11:34] Here's the Danish Radio Girls Chorus from their live "Midsommar" concert, performing "Kære Farmor" ("Dear Grandma"). Lyrics and music by Sys Bjerre and arranged by Nenia Zenana. [00:11:45] [Music excerpt: a girls chorus sings in Danish wondering about their grandmothers' experience and life.]
Giacomo [00:12:15] I think to say, I imagine that your your musicians as jazz musicians and vocalists who are maybe a little bit more comfortable with studio recording, might have a little bit of a leg up in the same way that the, you know, the the Danish Girls Choir, they're like, "Oh, yeah! I'm totally comfortable putting a camera in my face." How did your singers respond to the project? Did you see a steeper learning curve with some groups versus others?
Paul [00:12:45] So my singers... actually the virtual choir of videos that I've made for my group so far have actually been only my wife and I singing a choir, a whole choir, where we would just record ourselves four times and... eight times, rather. And then I use those videos as tools to help instruct my choir on how to learn something and also as a tool for them to feel like they're actually singing in a choir. So they would just sing along with a video of my wife and I singing all the parts of several of a few different choir songs. So that was pretty early on in the pandemic to just sort of tie people over to get them to feel like they're participating in something musical that has harmony.
Paul [00:13:36] And that's one of the big things about the pandemic is that, before then, choir directing and just being in a choir was about getting together and sort of feeling the sensation of vocal harmony together with other people and through your body. And uh... There's a lot of sort of subconscious tuning that happens when you're... when you line your voice up with what you're hearing. And... and those subconscious tunings give you that sort of euphoric choir feeling.
Zane [00:14:08] Yeah.
Paul [00:14:08] They give you some sort of dopamine rush or whatever it is. But then with the pandemic that all changed. You don't get that experience anymore. So you somehow have to figure out how to recreate some semblance of those... of that choir experience. And so the first thought that I had in my mind was, "Well, it's... it's about harmony. So I'll make... I'll make all the harmonies. And then they sing along with the harmony. And I kind of feel that."
Paul [00:14:34] But then it made me really think, "Well, why are people..." It really forced me to take a step back and say, "Why are people actually in this group? Why are people singing and why am I singing? Why do I like to sing in choir?" And besides just the rush of getting together and making vocal harmony, because since I can't do that, I have to figure out what other things are making people motivated to be in choir and try and tailor my sort of online choir directing to those needs. And that first I was thinking, "Well, let's see, they probably like the challenge of learning something, but they also want to kind of improve their voice. They want to... they want to be entertained and they want to have some outlet for their creativity." So... So at first, my online choir conducting sessions were a lot about entertainment where I would just have a lot of backstories about the composers or about the pieces or about my own experiences. And then I also did a lot of voice building things where we actually had... I spent a lot more time on warm ups and a lot more time on actual instruction for how... how to sing and how to breathe and how to make your voice stable and all this kind of stuff. So that was the early, early times. But now we're getting a little bit further into the sophistication of the technology to try and get back into making music situation.
Giacomo [00:16:20] Paul, maybe to to step back for a sec...You mentioned... we mentioned earlier that you were in Copenhagen, so obviously in Denmark. Paint a picture for our listeners of what the pandemic looked like for you and particularly for the music scene in Denmark.
Paul [00:16:37] Well, the pandemic hits Denmark on March 11th. I didn't hit Denmark on March 11th... But on March 11th, there was a national press conference where the prime minister essentially locked down the country. And already on March 11th, we had had... I had heard from some of my colleagues about a pretty well-known choir in Denmark that got struck down by COVID there. At that time already, the director of that choir was in the hospital fighting for his life...
Zane [00:17:18] Oh wow...
Paul [00:17:18] ... And half the members were sick in... to various degrees with the... with COVID. And but it wasn't... it wasn't big national news. I just knew it because I knew the conductor and I knew some of the members of that choir. But everything, everything just stopped. And, you know, everybody had concerts ready to go. I was actually uh... getting ready to conduct Brahms Requiem.
Zane [00:17:46] Oh wow...
Paul [00:17:46] ... And we had to postpone that or cancel all the concerts, really. Yeah. So choir life just completely shut down. And then the only big question there was whether choir directors are going to continue to get paid and whether professional musicians were going to continue to get paid. But the government came through with a lot of aid packages to keep people at least paid through the spring.
Zane [00:18:17] Wow, that's amazing!
Paul [00:18:18] But... but the shutdown in Denmark was pretty early by European standards, and it stayed shut down for about a month. And then they opened the schools again in mid-April. And then the numbers just kept on getting lower and lower so that by the summer everything was sort of normal again. All the restaurants were open and everything was open and everything was operating totally normally. And every choir had sort of canceled their season, the rest of their season. But then at the beginning of the Fall, all the choirs, just... most of the choirs that could get back together, all the boards made some decisions about whether how to start the season, where to start the season, and... and then a lot of the choirs did.
Giacomo [00:19:03] I gotta imagine that there's some mixed emotions about that. I mean, enthusiastic maybe in the Fall to feel like, "Oh, maybe we can get back together! But maybe a shred of concern still?
Paul [00:19:14] Oh, sure. There was plenty of concern because around the world, in most places, the numbers were not abating very much.
Zane [00:19:24] Right!
Paul [00:19:24] But in Denmark it was really low. And also at the end of March, there came out that big news story from Skagit, Washington?
Zane [00:19:36] Yup.
Paul [00:19:37] About the big coronavirus outbreak in that choir. And I think there was also a story of one in Amsterdam. And then there was also another story of a choir in Denmark that gave a concert and uh... and a lot of members of the choir as well as the audience got infected. And then I found out about yet another choir in Denmark. And so it... so it was pretty clear that singing in close proximity was a no-go.
Zane [00:20:02] Right.
Paul [00:20:03] So if you're asking me about how uh... how it felt at the beginning, yeah, I was sent on a mission with one of the board members to basically evaluate all the biggest public rooms in the township that the choir is based to find out if any of those rooms were big enough for the choir to actually meet at a safe enough distance to start singing. And that's with the backdrop of there being virtually... I mean, very, very few cases in Denmark at that time. So we looked around and there was one room that was big enough. It was like, you know, the size of a basketball... basketball court. And uh...
Giacomo [00:20:46] ... and this is for how many musicians in that size?
Paul [00:20:49] This was for a choir of thirty five.
Zane [00:20:53] Wow! [astonished laughter].
Zane [00:20:54] Yeah, we were talking to Josh Habermann about the Dallas Symphony Orchestra or sorry, Dallas Symphony Chorus. And when they were doing the same kind of thing, like, "How big a space?" He just did it for fun. But "how much space would we need?" And it turned out they needed to, they would need to rehearse or sing at the Cowboys Stadium for a choir of their size. [laughter from all] That's two hundred and twenty singers. But still it's like, you know, when he did the math it was like, "Oh yeah, we just have to go and talk to Jerry Jones and we'll just go sing at the Cowboys Stadium. It'll be fine." [laughter from all]
Paul [00:21:26] But I was really nervous those first few rehearsals, first couple of rehearsals. I was like, "Man!"... Because we had been so careful up until.. my family and I, we had been very careful from the beginning of the lockdown up until that moment, and then suddenly to feel like, "OK, well, we're pulling the trigger here and we're going to get thirty five people into a big room, you know, a really big room."
Zane [00:21:53] Yeah.
Paul [00:21:55] And... and try and sing together. And it had really high ceilings and everything with lots of windows. And I was really nervous. But then as the season went on and all the choirs opened up in a similar way, there was like all the, you know, all the big theaters and auditoriums and basketball courts and stuff like that, they were all taken up by choirs [laughter] rehearsing in their new space. And we didn't hear about anything. And so people started to just sort of feeling a little more comfortable with it. And then they all, after several rehearsals, started to focus a little more on the music and a little less on what we're doing, you know, whether we're doing something really risky.
Giacomo [00:22:36] And what are the state of things now in January? Or are things still in this sort of state where they're mostly open with some precautions or did things..?
Paul [00:22:46] Uh, nope. What happened to us in the early part of December? The numbers got to such a state in Denmark that they had to close everything down again. And so we went... we went back to lock down. All the choirs kind of canceled the rest of their seasons. Anybody that had concerts in November was kind of lucky and able to do that. But at the beginning of December, the Danish Radio National, sort of the large choir, that symphonic chorus of the Danish Radio Orchestra, which is 60... 60 something professional singers, 46 of them got COVID from a series of rehearsals and they rehearse in the... They rehearse in the big concert hall. So they rehearse, you know, in a huge space where they take up... they sit where the audience sits. So they sit in a, you know, gigantic area.
Zane [00:23:42] Yeah.
Paul [00:23:44] All the audience seats behind the orchestra.
Zane [00:23:47] Sure.
Paul [00:23:48] So forty six out of them, something like two thirds to three quarters of the choir got COVID.
Zane [00:23:53] Wow!
Giacomo [00:23:54] Whoa!
Paul [00:23:54] Well, and so everybody just stopped immediately.
Zane [00:23:56] Yeah.
Paul [00:23:57] And that was... that was the first big choir story relating to COVID infection to get public in Denmark. And... and so there's nothing to do.
Zane [00:24:09] Yeah. Wow.
Paul [00:24:11] And so... So right now it's... we're still in that situation. The numbers are not that low. It's kind of comparable to the Bay Area actually.
Zane [00:24:20] Oh, okay...
Paul [00:24:21] Which is... I mean, the Bay Area is in better shape than a lot of parts of the United States and in much better shape than Southern California, for instance. And Denmark is on a par... Denmark's on a par with the Bay Area. So we're still just... there's no choir activity yet.
Zane [00:24:37] Yeah... Yeah, I was just seeing some statistics that the Bay Area has something like eight million people and have only had 2600 deaths, whereas New York has the same amount of people, but they've had 25000 deaths. And then Southern California is like 10 million people and they've had something like, I don't know, 10000 deaths or something like that. So it's so yeah, the Bay Area is doing better, but it's still not great, you know.
Giacomo [00:25:06] Paul, how are you keeping in touch with your colleagues at this point? I mean, I'm sure you must all be trading notes, both colleagues who are there in Denmark with you and around the world. I mean, I'm sure that everyone sort of got these different perspectives and we're all trying to piece together the story of what's actually happening. How are you able to keep in contact and trade notes with other directors?
Paul [00:25:30] For the most part, I find out stories just from... just through the network. Some singers you know... There's a lot of people that know that I'm a choir director. So if they hear a story, they'll... they'll relay it on to me and then I'll get in contact with the person directly. And then with some of my choir directing friends, I just called them up once in a while and find out what's what's going on. And so I know that everybody has been in sort of a similar situation. A lot of people have gone through the video part of trying to be a choir director.
Zane [00:26:03] Myself included. [laughter]
Paul [00:26:03] And then a lot of people have. [laughter] Yeah... And then a lot of people have also gone through trying to rehearse within a huge space and finding out what... what challenges that presents. But mostly it's just been through word of mouth and then through contacting people directly, just having a conversation with them. I haven't done anything organized. But what I did do was, at some point in the Fall, I contacted the main Danish national choir or what organization called Choir 72. I think it's because it was started in 1972 [laughter from Paul and Zane] and I asked them, "Hey, what kind of research have you done on, you know... You're... you're actually in touch. You're sending emails out to the different choirs that I conduct and you're in touch with hundreds of Danish choirs. What kind of research have you done about exactly how this is impacting all these choirs and how and whether there's been any COVID spread in the choirs that has gone unreported?"
Paul [00:27:21] And they said, "Oh, those are... that's really good, good questions. We're really busy trying to put together our latest edition of the... (of the Big Like Choir 72 collection of choir pieces that they come out with every every few years, just edited together)." So they said they would get on it. And then I appointed one of my board members to follow up and stay after them. And there has been a lot of action from the different board members. And just in contacting the Ministry of Culture and contacting Choir 72 and contacting... creating things on Facebook just to make sure that there is a lot of shared information. So that's how people are sort of staying in touch with what each other is doing. As far as the... specifically as far as the COVID precautions and stories. And like another colleague of mine, actually, he sings in the Danish Radio Choir and he started a petition among all employees of the church, which includes hundreds and hundreds of musicians, petition them to shut down churches for Christmas, which was unheard of in Denmark. Denmark has a very strong sort of Christmas church tradition, and it gathered thousands of signatures and they ran it all the way up the flagpole to, uh, to the Ministry of Culture and as well as the Ministry of Churches. I don't know if it was because of that petition, but at the 11th hour on December twenty third, the ministry said, we recommend all churches shut down and then overnight every church shut down. So there was no Christmas.
Zane [00:29:22] Wow.
Paul [00:29:22] In the churches anyway.
Giacomo [00:29:24] Yeah. A lot of us are missing that. I mean, when we think of choral music, Christmas is the time that most people I think know it's sort of when you expect it... when you really, really want it. You know? What a blow!
Paul [00:29:38] And there are some fantastic... one of the first things I learned when I got here was that Denmark has their own tradition of really terrific Christmas songs that everybody knows. You know, just like you go to any American and they can name... they can name 20 different Christmas carols that they know most of the words to. And same thing in Denmark, except for the 20 songs that I had never heard of before and that they're really good [laughter from Paul and Zane]. Pretty much almost all of my favorite Danish traditional songs are Christmas songs.
Zane [00:30:06] Really? [laughter from Giacomo] Oh, that's so funny. [laughter]
Giacomo [00:30:10] Paul, you were a technologist in a previous life, or perhaps still are. And it's interesting to hear you talking about sort of taking on the mantle of learning all of this new technology and sort of streaming technologies and things like that. And it just sort of... the idea crossed my mind. It's like, wow, what an awesome opportunity this would have been to have an AR (artificial reality) or a VR (virtual reality) experience for choirs, right? When you were talking earlier about that feeling of community and sort of trying to recreate closeness with one another or trying to create the spaces that felt very safe. And I'm just wondering what else sort of... you were talking earlier about, "Gosh, what's going to come next?" I mean, what else do you imagine... if you had a sort of magic wand and you can wave and you can fix any problem with technology right now to get choirs back together... I mean, where does your brain go? What do you think? What do you imagine being possible?
Paul [00:31:03] Well, first of all, you know, I think everybody is... is trying to figure out what's the best possible way to do virtual choir rehearsal without latency over the Internet. But latency is you know... I don't know what the solution is on that one. I'm not... I'm not current enough on the state of technology. But I would imagine... if I had a magic wand, I would get rid of latency. And I know that, for instance, 5G has the promise of a greatly reduced latency over 4G. So which would enable... and I've been reading articles, you know, in years past about the coming technologies, would be allowing special skill operators like... like forklift operators or crane operators or things like that to operate from anywhere if there's no latency. And actually work their... their automated forklifts or cranes on building sites all over the world. And in a safe way, if you know, if the latency is only a few milliseconds, then you can actually do that.
Zane [00:32:21] Right!
Paul [00:32:21] But so I know that people are trying to push for that technology and that's going to affect millions of people in the choir world once it gets going.
Giacomo [00:32:29] It reminds me of the early days of like 2004-05, like the compression things that had to be created. I mean, YouTube couldn't have been born unless they were sort of new sort of algorithmic methods to figure out the delta from one screen to the next so that you weren't using bandwidth. Right? Because then streaming video bandwidth was the huge problem, not latency. And I'm just wondering, like, what's the analog here? Like, it blows my mind that it's like if you were performing a piece of music, you have the blueprint, right? You have a score in front of you. Why couldn't... I mean, the day that A.I. (artificial intelligence) can be smart enough to sort of predictively sought out latency, if you even give it a blueprint, you're like, this is the music that's about to happen. Right? I mean, it's really interesting. I keep wondering. So I don't know if anyone's listening out there and wants to figure out how to solve this problem for us [laughter from Zane]. You know, however creatively possible, it would be amazing. Because then I imagine, like, one of the things we want to talk about too was like, going forward, I mean, can you imagine any of these things? Like what opportunities are being opened up right now by the sort of new forms of technology, the new things we're all experimenting with? What do you think is going to stick and what are you most excited about?
Paul [00:33:38] Well. I think that, you know, first of all, if we can get a hold on the... if we can resolve the latency issues in any way that is possible, like you said, through possibly A.I. or just through higher, higher bandwidth technology, then it would enable the online rehearsals. But... And that would be great for a lot of different purposes. But there is no substitute for actually getting together and physically being with your fellow singers and sharing an experience together.
Giacomo [00:34:17] Here's a bit of Paul's fellow singers of the Frederiksborg Kammerkor singing "Laudate Dominum" by Vagn Holmboe. [00:34:23] [Music excerpt: a choir sings in Latin to sing praises to the Lord]
Paul [00:34:48] I think... you know, I welcome when the new technology would be able to allow choirs to get back together and sing in a safe way or choirs from all over the world to be able to sing in some sort of interesting, interesting way where maybe you could have workshop choirs instead of having people assembled together by flying there and become, you know, and getting part of the workshop. They just stay where they are, but they get all the same learning and most of the same feelings. So I welcome that. But at the same time, I also welcome just getting back together and... and sensing each other and...
Zane [00:35:32] Right, yeah...
Giacomo [00:35:33] And nothing... nothing replaces that human contact.
Paul [00:35:36] Right. Right...
Giacomo [00:35:36] Well, bad news, Paul. We're actually living in a simulation already [laughter from all].
Paul [00:35:39] It's so realistic!
Giacomo [00:35:42] There's no... there's no excuse people. Come on! Why is there latency here? I want a, I want a better. Yeah. I want a better version of the Matrix. We need to upgrade. [laughter from Paul and Zane]
Zane [00:35:53] You're gonna have to upgrade your OS (operating system) to do that. Sorry, yeah [laughter from Giacomo]. That's going to take a while because all the Internet's being used for Zoom meetings now [laughter]. So pivoting a little bit. I want to talk about gospel choir. How did you get into, you know, gospel choir directing, gospel music in general? And then how does that spin into gospel music in Denmark for you?
Paul [00:36:17] Whoo! OK, I'll tell you, this is a... It's a fairly long story, but I, you know, I owe it to gospel music for my whole choir experience, actually.
Zane [00:36:32] Oh, really?
Paul [00:36:32] I was getting my degree in computer science and then I joined some sort of... some no-audition singing group just to, just actually to be able to get some free piano lessons [laughter]. And somebody offered me some piano lessons, if I could get some, if I could be in this choir. And I had no singing experience at that point. So I was in the choir and the guy that was sitting next to me said, "Hey, you can, you can actually carry a tune! You should check out this gospel choir, gospel choir that I'm in." And I said, "Yeah, I'm not anything about gospel music. I don't even know it. I don't, I don't want to know it.".
Paul [00:37:18] So anyway, my time in that choir was very short, just a few months. And then, and then, the piano lessons stopped and I stopped that. And but the guy got my phone number and he kept calling me for, like, every month for about a half a year.
Zane [00:37:33] Wow!
Paul [00:37:34] And said, "Hey, man, come down and visit the gospel choir. You're gonna like it! We're gonna... We could use somebody like you!" And I was like, "Yeah, thanks for calling. No." And then on the sixth call, he said, "Hey, uhh, the gospel choir is having auditions in a few weeks. You should go sign up!" And right at that moment I had gotten busy at work and I had no... I wasn't doing anything musical. I wasn't practicing piano. I wasn't doing anything. And I thought, "Well, all right, let's see. Let's see what's going on." [laughter from Zane].
Paul [00:38:14] And I had never even considered being in a choir at that point. So I went and checked out the choir. And at that rehearsal that I went to, the choir director was just yelling at the choir all the time for not singing things correctly. And I thought, "Oh, well, I could probably hang with this choir. Maybe, I could get in this choir." [laughter from Zane].
Paul [00:38:35] So it wasn't discouraging at all. It was actually encouraging because I was like, "Yeah, I'm not a singer, but this choir's just getting yelled at all the time so I can do that." [laughter from Paul and Zane] So I auditioned for the gospel choir and, you know, and luckily they needed basses really badly.
Zane [00:38:57] Mmm... that's the story of every choir ever.
Paul [00:39:01] Yeah! Such an advantage! The only... Yeah so anyway, I joined that gospel choir and that was the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. It's a really good choir, but I just caught them on a really bad day where they were just getting chastised constantly by Terrance Kelly. And so he let me into the choir and I had just a tiny little voice, but I could actually sing, you know, in tune. And I could remember notes and I could, and I could sing low enough. So, he saw me as sort of a little project. But then while I was in the choir, that's where sort of the real story starts. So gospel choir music is traditionally taught orally...
Zane [00:39:52] Right.
Paul [00:39:53] ... And the choir director sings something and then everybody sings it back. And the new technology of the 1990s was everybody had a little tape recorder and they would record what they're supposed to sing and they would listen to it throughout the week to make sure that they didn't forget and then come back and, and keep going from that point. And so I went and bought a tape recorder and I had all kinds of problems with this tape recorder. I could... it would turn on in my backpack and then I would have no batteries by the time rehearsal started. This happened several times. Or I would forget to flip the tape over so that, you know, suddenly it would just cut out right at the time where I actually needed to know what was going on and I wouldn't notice it or, you know, it was just... or the microphone would move or get put in the wrong place. And I couldn't hear anything. It was just terrible. I hate it... I hated it.
Paul [00:40:47] So I would go to rehearsal and I would think, "OK, how can I actually remember these parts?" And I thought, "Oh, I'm just gonna write down the scale degrees because gospel choir music is primarily diatonic.".
Zane [00:41:02] Right.
Paul [00:41:02] So I, uhh, so I just wrote down all the scale degrees of the bass parts and the bass parts were, you know, a lot simpler than the other parts. It was a lot of one, one, one, one...
Giacomo [00:41:11] One four five one.
Paul [00:41:12] One, one, five, five one [laughter]. And so I would sing... I would just write down all the scale degrees and then I started to get pretty good at it. And then I could start writing down the full bass part with some extra notation that I used with apostrophes and things that I would use for rhythm. And then as I got better at that, I found out, "Oh well, now I'm just sitting around because I always know exactly what my part is, because I've written it down. There's no ambiguity."
Paul [00:41:43] So I started writing down every section's parts...
Zane [00:41:47] Aahh...
Paul [00:41:47] ... For every song. And so, I wound up with like a notebook of a hundred pages just filled with parts of every song. And at one point Terrance said to one of the sections, "He's singing their part." And they're saying, "That's not the part you taught." And he was like, "What are you talking about? That's the part." And then, and then I timidly raised my hand and I said, "Actually, last week you taught them this part." And then I sang it.
Zane [00:42:19] Yup.
Paul [00:42:19] And then he was like, "Hmm." And, uhh, and then he, uhh...
Zane [00:42:24] [laughter] "You're out! You're out of the choir!".
Paul [00:42:25] That's what he could... [laughter]
Giacomo [00:42:29] There's one thing choir directors love: it's being corrected in front of their choirs.
Zane [00:42:34] Oh! Yes, yes! We love it so much. [laughter]
Paul [00:42:36] So, uhh, so anyway, he found out what I was doing and he was like, "Wait! Do you know every part of every song from every date that I've given it, including changes and what days I changed it?" And stuff like that, because I tracked everything. And I said, "Yeah, I know every single part, I've written every single part down on every single day of every single song." And he said, "This could be very useful. I need an assistant director who knows this kind of stuff." And so, he trained me up to be his assistant director and the professional band members of the choir, one of them encouraged me to actually study music...
Zane [00:43:23] Hmm.
Paul [00:43:23] And they saw something that was... They saw some potential. So that actually led me into classical music. And basically it was like years and years of ear training, like just nonstop ear training for three hours every week...
Zane [00:43:37] Yeah.
Paul [00:43:38] ... was my basis for getting into classical music. And so, so that's that's what gospel choir means to me, actually. And that's one of the reasons that I always feel this sort of loyalty and gratefulness to gospel music that I wanna always make sure I keep it in my, my field of vision and give back when I can and promote it when I can, 'cause I see it as a tool.
Paul [00:44:06] Of course, the primary tool is for spirituality and for expression of Christianity and... but even more importantly, expression of, expression of spirituality and expression of overcoming and surviving and fellowship and, you know, going back to its... to the origins, of course, and... But I see it also as a tool for togetherness and musicality. And it's, you know, there's so many, there's hundreds of gospel choirs in Denmark. And a lot of the traditional choirs actually have trouble attracting younger members because the younger members would prefer to be in a rhythmic choir like a gospel choir.
Zane [00:45:02] Sure.
Paul [00:45:02] And but, you know, there's plenty of people like me, too. And I actually have people in my classical choir that also went through the same stage. They started in gospel choir. I found them through my gospel workshops. And then they found out that I was a classical choir conductor and they would check out the classical choir and they'd say, "Oh, this is actually even more my thing than the gospel choir.".
Zane [00:45:24] Aahh!
Paul [00:45:24] So I'm not, I'm not saying, you know, what should be one thing or another. I'm saying every kind of choir should try and promote the musicality of every individual...
Zane [00:45:36] Yeah, yeah.
Paul [00:45:36] ... And let them express themselves musically in the way that fits them best, whether it's gospel music or classical music.
Zane [00:45:44] Sure, sure.
Paul [00:45:44] And I don't see any difference. I don't see any, like, I don't think there should be a distinction or like separate camps or anything. We're all in the choir business.
Giacomo [00:45:51] And speaking of the broad complement of musical ranges that any individual is capable of, for people who are listening, our intro music is a great little song called "Mr. Puffy"...
Zane [00:46:02] Oh, yeah!
Giacomo [00:46:02] ... which happens to come from?
Zane [00:46:05] Yeah, that's, that's a good, that's a good segue, Giacomo [laughter from Giacomo and Paul]. You're very good at that! Yeah, when we were first, you know, generating ideas for the podcast and I was looking, I was thinking about what kind of music we wanted to play at the outset of every episode, you know, that would kind of embody the spirit of of the podcast without being some piece of classical choral music that everybody knows. I don't know what made me think of putting on this CD from a Danish vocal jazz group called Dynamic. I happen to know one of the guys in that group. His name is Paul Kim. Oh wait, we're talking to you, Paul! [laughter from Giacomo].
Zane [00:46:44] Sorry, I'm confused.
Paul [00:46:46] Yeah!
Zane [00:46:46] So I came... I just started listening to your CD one day and I hit play on track, I think it's five. And it was this song called "Mr. Puffy". And as soon as I clicked play, I immediately heard that as the beginning of our podcast. And I was so excited. I'm like, "Oh my God! This could be so perfect." And that's when I reached out to you and said, "Can we have permission to use this?" And you hooked it up. So now, it's really nice to have you face to face. We can thank you personally for giving us the permission and hook us up with that song. But I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about "Mr. Puffy" and you know, how it came about that you know of it and your arrangement of it. You know, just tell us a little bit more of that song.
Paul [00:47:31] That's, that's so awesome! It's... First of all, it's totally awesome to be some little part of your terrific podcast, to have contributed the part of the intro theme. I feel really... what? Lucky and honored to be a part of that in that way. But anyway, the story of "Mr. Puffy" is in the 1990s, there was a nice jazz scene in San Francisco centered around, not centered, but one of the cool places to... For the new jazz musicians to do their thing was the Up and Down Club. And the Up and Down Club was a club partially owned by Christy Turlington, who at that time was one of the world's most successful supermodels. And she's from the Bay Area. And so a lot of cool jazz people, young and some older, but everybody with a really open mind. I know some of the older guys that played there was Don Cherry and Miles... uh, not Miles - Don Cherry sounds a little like Miles Davis. Let's see... Eddie Marshall on drums and with some young guys like Charlie Hunter was young at that time before he really made it.
Paul [00:48:51] And one of the guys that played there was Avi Bortnick - young guitarist, a guitarist and songwriter. And so he wrote that song. And I got my hands on the CD from some... one of my friends who played on that CD. And I talked about the Up and Down Club. And he gave me that CD and just listened to "Mr. Puffy" on that one, and I just thought, "Man! This is... This is..." The whole CD was pretty awesome! It was just a collection of different artists that played at the Up and Down Club, contributing different songs. And I thought, you know, one of the things that Dynamic actually does is we try and do vocal arrangements of instrumental numbers...
Zane [00:49:41] Mmhmm...
Paul [00:49:42] ... And originally instrumental numbers. So "Mr. Puffy" was one of the ones that just captured my imaginations, sort of the same way it captured your imagination. I just thought, "Man! This is a really hip tune!".
Zane [00:49:53] Yeah.
Paul [00:49:53] So, uhh, so I wrote it out for voices to try and keep the same spirit and there it is.
Zane [00:50:03] Did you transcribe it? Or did he have a score or something for you to use?
Paul [00:50:05] No, no. I just I didn't know the guy at that time. I only knew... I only had the CD, so I just listened to it a bunch of times and then wrote out something that could fit four voices. And then I actually originally wrote it as an a capella song. And then when I went to Denmark, I started this band called Dynamic with a rhythm section just 'cause. You know, Dynamic actually does some a capella songs as well. But I felt like it gives it even more variety. It gives it more possibilities if you also have a rhythm section in there.
Paul [00:50:41] So I gave it to them and they thought that was pretty cool. So they learned that. And that's, that's where it is. Oh, and then I got in touch with Avi when we put it on our CD because I wanted to make sure that we could use it with his permission.
Zane [00:50:55] Right.
Paul [00:50:55] And he said, "Oh, of course!" And he didn't actually have the CD anymore. So he hadn't heard that track in years and years and years. And that CD, you know, nobody actually has that CD. They just printed up a few that were for sale, I guess, at the Up and Down Club.
Zane [00:51:10] Sure.
Paul [00:51:11] And that's the end of it. So it's not on Spotify. It's not on iMusic. It's nowhere. It only exists in a few people's bedrooms or forgotten CD collections or whatever.
Zane [00:51:23] Yeah! [laughter] That's amazing!
Giacomo [00:51:24] And did Avi fill you in? Or maybe this is just a, maybe this is actually a cultural thing. I just don't know. But did he fill you in on who or what Mr. Puffy actually is?
Paul [00:51:35] [laughter] I didn't ask that particular question, but, if it's any indication, the band, his band that recorded Mr. Puffy was called The Dry Look. And he said that The Dry Look just came from, you know, the commercial where you would have some hair, hair product [laughter from Giacomo]... like an old commercial from the 80s or something.
Giacomo [00:51:58] Like DAP Gel?
Zane [00:51:59] Yeah, right. [laughter].
Giacomo [00:51:59] Or whatever that stuff was.
Paul [00:52:00] Yeah, exactly. Gives you the dry look [laughter from Giacomo and Zane]. And so I'm sure it had some similarly, like obscure origin...
Zane [00:52:09] Yeah.
Giacomo [00:52:10] Voluminous hair.
Zane [00:52:11] And if...
Giacomo [00:52:12] The irony! Jesus!
Zane [00:52:13] Yeah, right. And Paul, if our listeners want to get their hands on some dynamic music by Dynamic, where should they go?
Paul [00:52:24] Ooh! They gotta go to dynamicjazz.dk. The "dot dk" is all the Danish websites. Yeah, dynamicjazz.dk. And our first CD is called "This is Dynamic" and it's on Spotify and iMusic and a bunch of streaming sites.
Zane [00:52:43] It's a great album. I listened to it probably three times back to back when I first got it from you when I saw you last. I'm a big fan and that website is great because it's also got some videos that you've made of the group singing, and it's just, yeah, a very talented group and great arrangements. I think that it's... I think everybody that likes vocal jazz should go check it out for sure. That's, that's it.
Paul [00:53:10] Thanks!
Zane [00:53:10] What is it again? Dynamicjazz.dk, right?
Paul [00:53:12] Yep, that's it.
Zane [00:53:14] Beautiful. Fantastic. And let's send you off with a recording of Dynamic in a live rehearsal of "What A Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong, arranged by Kat Rømhild. [00:53:26] [Music excerpt: a mid-tempo arrangement of "What a Wonderful World" with prominent female vocals and bass line evokes a dark and moody bar.]
Outro [00:53:45] Hey, thanks for listening to this week's episode of the In Unison podcast, but before we go... do you sing in an awesome choir that people should know about or maybe know a composer or conductor you'd love to hear on the show. How about any recent or upcoming performances that touched your heart, tickled your fancy or made you go, "Hmm...?" Well, then we would love to hear from you. Please shoot us a note at ideas@inunisonpodcast.com with your thoughts. And who knows, maybe Chorus Dolores will ask us to talk about it during announcements... In Unison is sustained, nourished and fostered by you, our loyal, loving listeners. And don't forget to subscribe to In Unison on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @inunisonpod. And hey, if you like what you heard, tell a friend or a section mate. Thanks again for tuning in. See you soon.
Chorus Dolores [00:54:50] Fragrance checks before rehearsal provided by Chorus Dolores - free of charge and shame.
Credits [00:55:00] In Unison is produced and recorded by Mission: Orange Studios. Our theme music is Mr. Puffy, written by Avi Bortnick, arranged by Paul Kim and performed by the Danish vocal jazz ensemble Dynamic on their debut album, This Is Dynamic. Special thanks to Paul Kim for permission. Be sure to check them out www.dynamicjazz.dk.