It’s an a-choir-ed taste.
New Yorkers young and old looking to connect — and dust off their singing skills — are racing to join the city’s no-audition no-commitment glee clubs.
They’re not only rediscovering a love of song — they’re also building community.
Amid big-screen juggernaut “Wicked” turning theatres into sing-alongs nationwide, local organizations like the Gaia Music Collective, the Everybody Sing choir and the Sing Easy choir have seen an influx in sign-ups for their choirs — and it’s about much more than the music, they say.
“A lot of people are looking for self-empowerment to learn how to take up more space and use their voices,” Jess McAvoy, 45, founder of the Sing Easy choir, told The Post.
The long-time vocal coach and musician has hosted these 80-minute drop-in singing workshops, which range in price from $15 to $35, around New York City for three years. Typically, they’ve attracted groups of about 6 to 25 but McAvoy has noticed the rooms filling up more in recent months.
And she’s not the only one hearing the call.
Rick Whitaker, 56, started the Everybody Sing choir last year, he told The Post, as a way to fight back against the loneliness epidemic, heightened safety fears in the city and a host of other stressors faced by Big Apple residents nowadays.
“I felt that it was time to do what I could to bring people together,” the events manager at Columbia University’s Italian Academy told The Post.
The veteran of multiple amateur and professional choirs has always loved music, so he decided to start a chorus that requires no auditions and charges no fees.
Lately, the Morningside Heights resident said he’s felt “a renewed urgency to the collective need for community and togetherness — in the face of uncertainty and fear” among his fellow New Yorkers.
Post-election, he noted, there had been a considerable rise in attendance.
Currently, Everybody Sings has about 30 consistent members “from all walks of life” and gladly accepts others who join the harmony when they can — in a no-pressure, no-mandatory-practice kind of environment.
The group meets nearly every Tuesday — they’ve only missed one week in a year — at Columbia University’s Casa Italiana to practice several songs in one rehearsal but go over the same tune for weeks or months before performing publicly at community gatherings.
Stefano Giovannini
“Making music together seems to be a particularly effective way to foster togetherness. We’re always trying to sing better, but our main priority is having fun and being together,” Whitaker said.
“People like to be doing something with other people where they feel they’re creating something. They’re doing something together that they could not do by themselves,” he continued.
“It’s irreplaceable.”
‘Magical’ meetups
Bill Delp, 65, was one of the first members of the Everybody Sing choir. He’s now been promoted to production manager.
And while the classical composer hadn’t let the music fade to silent in his life — not by a long shot — he hadn’t sung in a choir in 15 years. When he saw the advertisement for the group in his neighborhood paper, he knew it was for him.
“I like the interaction. Singing with other people, looking in their eyes, looking at the conductor and singing together are really important. It’s just magical stuff,” he told The Post — adding that even the simple act of taking a deep breath is good for people.
Although Delp has a career in music, he appreciates getting together to focus on having fun with it.
“Everybody’s there because they want to be there,” he noted. “Even though we’re not perfect, we keep getting together.
Embracing ‘the fabric of what makes humans human’
Virginia Thomas definitely wants to be there.
The Upper West Side resident, who copped to being over 60 — she insisted that a lady never tells her exact age — had received some “good feedback” from karaoke nights in the past and decided to finally give it a go when she saw the advertisement for a no-audition-required choir on a Facebook page.
“I’ve always wanted to sing. Why don’t I just give this a go?” Thomas told The Post, sharing that she’s been inspired by younger generations and their ability to go after and do what they want.
The retired schoolteacher has now found a new, fun focus for her life: she’s become Everybody Sing’s soloist and rehearses with Whitaker one-on-one.
Along with their appreciation for Whitaker and what the choir has helped them to discover, the members of Everybody Sing who met one recent week also said how much they enjoyed the chance to mingle — and to sample an array of sweet treats — at the end of each rehearsal.
“It’s sort of, you know, the fabric of what makes humans human — you know, sharing food and singing,” Thomas said.
Show off your pipes
Brooklyn’s Gaia Music Collective started in 2021 with about six people in a living room learning a song during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These days, the small team is touring the world, selling out events in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Washington, DC and London — with about 400 to 500 people joining each three-hour session to sing along for a few hours.
Stefano Giovannini
Guests who purchase a ticket, typically ranging from $15 to $35, to the One-Day Choir sessions are welcomed with sheet music, guided through vocal and body warm-ups, separated into their chosen vocal range and taught the music as a group before singing a few times all the way through and then set home humming all the way.
The events have become so popular that news has spread to Broadway and beyond.
Celebrities including JoJo, Leslie Odom Jr. and Jessica Vosk — who starred as Elphaba on Broadway and led a “Defying Gravity” sing-along — have even stepped into the middle of the singing circle to lead a few harmonies.
People regularly travel from New Jersey and Pennsylvania to join in — with some even flying in from as far away as the Caribbean, Europe and Australia, organizers said.
Escaping the ‘craziness’
Mark Stulberg, 44, traveled all the way from his home in Jersey City several Saturdays ago to be among the 250 attendees who gathered in a Bushwick basement to learn a rendition of Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em.”
He “absolutely loved” the first One Day chorus he attended about six months ago and returns as often as he can “to get away from the craziness of the world.”
“I spend a lot of time taking my son to basketball practice and my daughter to art class but I don’t do a ton of things like for myself,” the director of college counseling at North Star Academy in Newark told The Post.
Finding ‘childhood joy’
Brooklynite Olivia Kinne is also searching for something akin to carefree childhood hobbies.
Kinne, 24, feels that the world “is so crazy” at the moment, so anything that gets her to put her phone down, forget her worries and joyously connect with others is something she’s “trying to chase right now.”
Stefano Giovannini
“People need a bit more escapism than before,” she said.
She used to perform in high school theater and choirs but hasn’t yet found a way to make anything like it part of her regular schedule, she said.
“It’s really hard to find a way to incorporate that into my adult life, so any way that I can kind of tap back into that childhood joy I really love.”
“The world needs this, now more than ever,” Kenter Davies, the collective’s vocal arranger and choral facilitator, told The Post.
“I believe that humans are always seeking connection and community, but in this current moment it feels even more important to gather and find that sense of belonging.”
