If you want to know more details about the ITTC project, here you can read an interview with the creator, Karol Green, published on Regió7 and discover everything about the idea.
In the documentary Our Planet of Netflix, not only you can see beautiful and breathtaking images of nature and animals, but also the soundtrack and the message itself is really encouraging. Seduced by these elements, the well-known singer and choir director Karol Green had an idea: to set up a virtual global choir. And the more people, the better. To the point that, on April 12th, when the deadline was over, the project collected 378 recordings from 20 countries around the world, of Steve Price's song performed by Ellie Goulding.
In this picture, Karol Green, the creator.
Could you imagine where this was going? "It all started with my choirs. I run Barcelona Soul Choir and Gospelians de Girona. For us, rehearsals are a very important weekly meeting, and we were missing each other while we were quarantined. So I thought about what we could do to stay in touch and then I came up with the virtual choir idea."
How did you plan it?
"I picked the song Circle of Life by Elton John, from The Lion King musical, I prepared some audio guides and asked the members of the two choirs to record themselves on video singing the song. And when I received all the recordings, I mixed them in a video."
So you wanted to repeat the experience?
"I was surprised by the quality of the result, because it turned out very well. I was excited so I thought something similar could be done but open to everyone. When I found the song In This Together, I spent three days telling myself not to do it, it would make my life much more complicated... then, on the third day, I couldn't resist the idea any longer, so I explained it to some of the choir members and everyone said yes, let's go ahead. Everyone wanted to join in, and it was so exciting.
What’s so exciting about the choirs world?
"I have always been marvelled by choirs and how it is a beautiful place to join people. The choir members always work together as one, forgetting their differences, political or any other kind. For ten or eleven years now I have been running choirs, and before I entered this world I didn't have such a diverse group of friends, friends that I would never have made anywhere else. There are people of all ages, all professions... a choir is a symbol of union."
Is it with this spirit that you decided that the "In This Together" project should be open to everyone, not just professional musicians or choirs? "Yes, although we warned that the recordings had to be in good conditions. But the initiative echoed, the project appeared on the media, and in the end we received 378 audios. There are even three from Bermuda! In total, there are recordings from twenty different countries."
It shouldn’t be easy to mix 378 separate recorded voices.
"It obviously won't be like a live recording, but we have a very good sound engineer, Josué Pascual, who will make the final mix. We are now in the phase of editing the audios, clearing the noise and syncronizing all the sentences... but we won't touch the voice's tuning. We have a lot of work to do , but there is an incredible team behind: Alba Cánovas, Mireia Valentí, Patrícia Martín and Raül Maigí."
When can we hear the results? "We don't have a specific date, we hope it is ready by the end of April. We will upload a video to YouTube and other social media networks... While the whole project has been done on a voluntary basis, we don't want to get stressed."
Does the success of the virtual choir video inspire you to think of new similar projects? "I don't think I will... Let's see, a very nice and solid team has been created, and we don't know what the future holds, I like to live the present. I had no such plan before organising this project, nor do I have it now, we have only done it because of the situation we are living right now."
Were you surprised by the success of the initiative? "I freaked out a lot! It's not a song that everyone knows: the people who wanted to participate had to learn it. And then record it. It’s a lot of hours and a lot of people. I think what the song says has reached the soul of a lot of people."
A message of respect for nature and, deep down, for ourselves.
"Now we need to be altogether more than ever and to pay attention to the experts, but apart from what is happening, there are a lot of people who think we need a change. We need to live more in harmony with nature."
Do you think that with this initiative you have awakened vocations?
"On the blog, there are people who have left very beautiful comments. Some of them saying they feel like singing again. It's very exciting."
By the way, Steven Price himself supported the initiative, right?
"When I hadn't yet decided whether to go ahead with the project, I wrote to him. And he answered me saying that he liked the idea. It’s not that he gave me the rights of the song, as some people have asked me these days, but he gave me his encouragement."