Joining the choir

When we first moved to Belgium, I joined the international choir. We were on a NATO base, and the choir performed for many fun things; Battle of Britain, Tree Lighting at HQ, Independence Day, SHAPEfest. It was a great time. I knew that if I could find a choir in Seoul, then I would have "my thing."
I started looking for choirs before we left. I didn't want a church choir, I wanted something secular. If we sang religious music, fine, but I didn't want it to be affiliated with any specific church. It didn't take much searching until I found the Camarata Music Company. This choir was started by a very talented conductor from Wisconsin! He's an expat in Korea now, leading this choir among many other things. Because of him and the success of the choir performances, the Camarata Choir has had singers from 73 different countries. That's insane, I think, but so very cool. We have Kiwis, South Africans, Australians, Germans, Latvians, it's so crazy where people have come from to live in South Korea, for many different reasons. Anyway...
We got here just in time for me to start rehearsal for the Pops concert. It was a big choir, about 60 people. We sang everything from Can't Stop Believing to Old Devil Moon. We had so much fun, the music was great, the rehearsals were long, 4 hours every Sunday, but we really sounded wonderful. We had a band that played with us, and for a few songs, we had a singer from a local band, MagnaFall. That concert was on September 10th.
Right after that was over, I  mean the very next weekend, we started rehearsals for Handel's Messiah, the whole thing! We practiced every weekend, minus one for a Korean holiday, other than that, we were at it. Rehearsing every Sunday at various locations around Seoul as our choir swelled to over 120 singers. Many of the singers had sung with Camarata before and were amazing.  We worked so hard over those few months. Our conductor, Ryan, has done this piece many times, and changes up some of the little things. Dynamics, emphasis on certain syllables, etc, it was hard and precise and so worth it.
Our performance was on December 10th, and we packed the place. We performed with a symphony, which was amazing and had professional singers from South Korea come and do the big solos for us. They were so good, I am so happy we rehearsed once with them before we had the performance, because

most of us newbies were in awe of them. The ambassador from the US attended, the ambassador from Finland attended, people from everywhere packed this church to hear us sing Handel's Messiah. And we sounded great. I was so sick, I sounded like a frog had swallowed a cricket and so I had a very, very limited range. I sang what I could, quietly, and lip-synced the heck out of the rest.  I had told the conductor that I could sit out, that was fine, but he insisted that I perform what I could since I had rehearsed with the group the whole time. Really, I was very humbled, because I am not half the singer that most of those people are, and it was a privilege.
I'm glad that I was able to find this choir so I could have my own special thing during our time in South Korea. The choir makes made me a better singer. I made friends from all over the world. It helped  me see so many different places in Seoul that I might not have know about otherwise. It has been just one more thing that has made our time in South Korea special.

If you are interested, you can check out the link above and you can also take a look at their Facebook page, Camarata Music Company.