The Hong Kong Bach Choir at 50: diverse and well drilled, with ‘a feeling of community’, it grew from amateur expat group

Twenty-seven years ago, Lorrie Coleman joined the Hong Kong Bach Choir. Today, as the choir gets ready for its 50th anniversary concert, the English teacher originally from Georgia in the United States is its longest-serving member. Looking back at her long involvement, Coleman wonders what her life in Hong Kong would have been without it. “We moved here from Chicago in 1989 when my husband took up a position with the music department at Hong Kong Baptist University. We came with our then five-year-old son and our daughter was born here. I was very much the ‘expat wife and mother’ but I felt there was something missing,” she says. It was singing. She realised that as soon as she joined the choir, and she hasn’t stopped since. “I have a degree in singing and music education and had always sung in the church or with choirs in the US. I had always sung and for the first four or five years here, I had missed that.” One of the highlights of her time with the Bach Choir was when it was invited to the send-off for Britain’s Prince Charles and Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, singing amid a heavy downpour in a makeshift outdoor venue on the night of June 30, 1997. “It was like singing in a large parking lot,” Coleman remembers. Now she is about to sing to mark the choir’s 50th anniversary, with a December 7 performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor led by conductor Jerome Hoberman, music director since 1992. Born in New Jersey, Hoberman is one of several Americans to have played major roles in shaping what used to be seen as a symbol of British colonial Hong Kong. The Bach Choir’s earliest years are a little fuzzy, Hoberman says. In either 1969 or 1970, a small group was formed for a one-off Bach Cantata concert organised by the Federal Republic of Germany’s consulate. This coalesced into a more permanent group under Carl Halter, an American church musician and university administrator who lived in Hong Kong from 1969-71 as an education consultant for the colony’s Lutheran churches. The Bach Choir was one of a number of expat colonial groups and the entire management were British expats … It mirrored the divisions in Hong Kong society. Jerome Hoberman, music director It was around that time that a true old-timer, Hong Kong historian and former civil servant Patrick Hase, joined the choir with his wife, Aileen. “Patrick would surely be the longest-serving member if he hadn’t just moved back to the UK,” Coleman says. The choir received the sad news recently of the death of Michael Ryan, a long-time Hong Kong Baptist University academic who led the choir for a few years during the 1980s. The Hases and other early participants would remember a very different Bach Choir, one set up as an amateur choral society mainly for the expatriate population. “When I joined in 1992, the Bach Choir was one of a number of expat colonial groups and the entire management were British expats. At the same time, there were many local Chinese choirs that mainly sang choral arrangements of Chinese folk music, except for the Hong Kong Oratorial Society, which sang big pieces but was still overwhelmingly local in its make-up,” Hoberman says. “It mirrored the divisions in Hong Kong society. But I wanted to attract more Hong Kong people and make the choir larger. Even in 1992, with the handover [of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule] just a few years away,it was important to me that this group became part of Hong Kong itself and not part of some foreign imposition.” It took a long time for word to get out that it wasn’t “an expat group”, he says, and it was only in the 2003/4 season that the choir had a local Chinese chair. Jaap is back: HK Phil maestro on a reset for the orchestra and himself Another major shift was a diversification of repertoire. Despite its name, the choir regularly sings new music and commissions pieces by Hong Kong composers, such as the 2015 world premiere of James Boznos’ Cantata No. 2 “Nevu’ah” (Prophecy) and a new piece Vanissa Law is working on for a concert in 2022. There was no audition in the early days either. “Anyone could join, and the average age was considerably higher than today and there were a lot of well-worn voices that relied on experience,” says Hoberman. He began to be strict about auditions in the year 2000 and insisted on singers being able to read music and learning their parts on their own before first rehearsals. It is very demanding, but you make very good friends, Coleman says. “During rehearsals there is usually a break, and we have snacks and we chat. After concerts, we go out and celebrate. We have many different nationalities among members and many languages, and all are welcome,” she adds. One way of keeping things friendly during a politically tense time in Hong Kong is to make sure everyone focuses on the music, Hoberman says. “During the 2019 protests, I recall that announcements had to be made that we would not countenance political discussions in the rehearsal rooms. Music making takes all my capacity. I cannot multitask and I do not think the singers should too.” He likes to think of the choir as a utopian model for society. “I think if the body politic of Hong Kong can come together the same way individuals in the Bach Choir come together, then the world would be a very good place. These people come together out of their love for one thing, and that expands into a feeling of community,” he says. Hong Kong Bach Choir 50th Anniversary Concert: Bach Mass in B Minor, Concert Hall, The Hong Kong Cultural Centre, 8pm, Tue, Dec 7.