It took one intrepid woman to inspire another to create three of Hong Kong’s best choirs.

words yvonne teh

With a golden apple in his hand, he slowly walked between two lines of contending beauties: his eye was detained by the charms of Icasia, and in the awkwardness of a first declaration, the prince could only observe, that, in this world, women had been the cause of much evil; “And surely, sir,” she pertly replied, “they have likewise been the occasion of much good.” Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The prince was Theophilus, the Greek Emperor of Constantinople, and Icasia (aka Kassia), one of the noble women lined up to be his bride – he would give the golden apple to the one he chose. When his eye was caught by Icasia, he stopped and made the remark. Her reply was not what the prince wanted to hear and the golden apple went to another lady. Icasia retired to a nunnery and became a prolific writer of hymns, sacred songs and even some secular verses. And some 1,150 years later lent her name to three choirs on an island off the coast of China.

Bethan Greaves chose to name her Kassia Women’s Choir in honour of the Byzantine composer of chants and hymns because she “sounded like a gutsy woman; she did her own thing [and]…just sounded like an interesting woman. And the fact that her name began with a K (like Katterwall, Greaves’ company) helped!”

Greaves arrived in Hong Kong on January 1st, 1999 and had the idea to set up a women’s choir while working from the spare bedroom in her first flat some three years later. In the four years since then, not only has that idea become a reality but she has established two other choirs – the Kassia Men’s Chorus and the Kassia Youth Choir – as well. Now, just two days before the fourth anniversary of the women’s choir, all three will join the Cecilian Singers and the Typhoons for a concert appropriately titled Raising the Roof 2007.

Billed as “a choral extravaganza”, this two-hour show will see over 150 singers – some as young as 13, others in their 60s – gather for a wide variety of songs like an a cappella version of Mission Impossible, a gospel version of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, a Yoruba-language Nigerian processional entitled Bethelehemu, and Frank Sinatra’s classic New York, New York.

The five choirs will also each take 15 minutes to present their own musical programme – the Kassia Women’s Choir’s allotment will be dedicated to the Andrew Sisters, ‘America’s Wartime Sweethearts’, whose music Greaves declares she has “been in love with for as long as I can remember”. The Kassia Men’s Chorus will be crooning classic songs associated with the back-in-vogue Rat Pack, like Frank Sinatra’s My Way, Sammy Davis, Jr’s What Kind of Fool Am I? and Dean Martin’s I Got the Sun in the Morning.

In contrast, the Cecilian Singers’ programme will be African rather than American and the Kassia Youth Choir will be singing in Korean, Italian and English. And the international mix continues in the Typhoon’s section of this feast of choral music with their a cappella renditions of songs as diverse as The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Jay Chou’s Tornado and George Michael’s Faith.

According to Greaves, “Many people come to our concerts thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t want to go to a choir concert…’ but the vast majority send me an e-mail or catch me after a concert and say ‘That’s amazing, that was so enjoyable!’” One reason for that stems from the fact that “we don’t do big long works. We don’t do things that start at 9 o’clock and finish at 10:15pm in one piece”. She also thinks it helps a lot that “everybody who’s singing (at the concert), will be singing because they love it. The standards are high but they love doing it as well”.

And a further selling point is “a very family-friendly atmosphere” at her concerts. That is due not just to musical programmes that can be enjoyed by the whole family, but rather a general family feeling that pervades the Kassia choirs.

Greaves admits, “When I set up the Kassia Women’s Choir, I just thought about the choir, the music and the singing. I never thought about the social element. It never ceases to amaze me…[that] people join with their friends and then they make friends. I’d say that I made half of my friends through the choir. And I’m actually a godmother to one of the member’s children. It’s not a prerequisite for joining the choir, but it’s nice!”

And Matthew Hale, conductor of the Kassia Youth Choir, chimes in: “We’ve got a lot of family groups in the [Kassia] choirs. For example, we’ve got a husband and wife; a husband, wife and their daughter; a father and daughter; a husband, wife and their son… It’s really nice, especially when we do the en masse choir, because then you’ve got families up on stage singing together.”

As Greaves points out, “There aren’t many things you can do as a group that don’t involve sport. I don’t think there’s anything more special than having a whole group of people singing together and creating more than the sum of the parts.”

Raising the Roof 2007: A Choral Extravaganza will be on 11 June at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre’s Concert Hall. Tickets are $220, $180 and $120 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.