“He’s a cocky little shit,” says Dr Opeloge Ah Sam affectionately in episode one of Choir Games. Ah Sam’s mild opprobrium is directed at Kees, a 17-year-old mechanic who happens to have an attractive tenor voice that the choir director, known to all as Ope, is trying to slip into the Kaitāia Community Voices.
The all-ages group comprises several people like Kees – not cocky little shits, rather singers who are untrained but who have something. Ah Sam aims to make them good enough to appear at the 2024 World Choir Games in Auckland. Ope entered the competition, his wife says, before he had a choir, which seems the wrong way around but here we are. In all, 11,000 singers from nearly 30 countries will take part in the games, and Ah Sam has just seven rehearsals to get his willing but inexperienced group ready.
14,000 kilometres and a million miles away in approach, Francisco Núñez is working his own singers. This is YPC, the Young People’s Chorus of New York. They claimed five gold medals at the World Choir Games 2023 in South Korea and are preparing to bring a whisker under 100 singers to New Zealand.
The contrast between the New York and Kaitāia groups is one of the threads running through Choir Games, a four-part series from celebrated film-maker Leanne Pooley, best known for her cinematic documentaries about the Topp Twins, Sir Edmund Hillary and Gallipoli.
Choir Games makes a lot out of the differences, constantly jumping from scenes of bustling Manhattan to sleepy Kaitāia, or from Ope’s slightly ramshackle rehearsals to Núñez’s militarily precise drills. Among the biggest differences, though, is what the participants expect from the games.
“Kaitāia is never going to compete against YPC, and that’s why this isn’t a series about the competition,” Pooley says. “What you really want is for those young people to feel good about themselves.”
That’s not necessarily what the young people want. The Northlanders are having an adventure, but YPC is there to win. Going into the games, the New Yorkers are among the favourites, given their medal haul the previous year. Their expectation of excellence is set and reinforced by the demanding Núñez. He’s not a character you warm to at first.
“That’s New York,” Pooley explains, “you have to cut [Núñez] some slack. I love Francisco and what he does for these kids; he cares deeply. Some of them have met Obama. It’s stuff a kid from the South Bronx isn’t going to get to do. And in America you have to have excellence to have those opportunities.”
A good example is Eddie, one of the series’ central characters. He’s a spotty teen who came through the US foster care system, and he’s the kid from the South Bronx – which in Choir Games looks like a war zone – that Pooley refers to. His superpower, the thing that means he can escape crumbling buildings in a single bound, is a remarkable bass voice. It’s a blessing for both Eddie and his mum, who worries about what her son would be getting up to if he wasn’t always at choir practice.
The Far North isn’t the South Bronx, but it has its issues, too, of course. In the documentary, Eddie’s Kaitāia equivalent is Toronge, an 18-year-old who’s been through more than anyone his age should have to. “I got him on board because I knew it would instil some joy in his life,” Ah Sam says in episode one. It’s the first indication of many that Ah Sam’s role is at least as much pastoral as musical.
The Choir Games crew found that spirit of care and generosity throughout Northland, and Pooley came to love a part of the country she didn’t really know.
“We’d bowl up and people would have made a big feed for us,” she says, “and these are people who may not have a great deal. They don’t often get to be in the spotlight, so it was nice that they could be seen for something positive, rather than the negative stuff people often hear about Northland.”
Pooley planned to follow more choirs from more places but the budget made that impractical, especially since she had to invest a big slice of it in getting rights clearances for the songs, including The Beatles’ Can’t Buy Me Love.
“It’s the biggest music budget I’ve ever had,” says Pooley, who previously delved into vocal harmonies on her award-winning Topp Twins documentary Untouchable Girls. “Music is a gift for a film-maker. You’re hoping to achieve an emotional connection, and music gets you part of the way there. I wanted the choirs to be singing songs people knew, and I wanted the audience to kind of feel they could sing along.”
Good luck with that. There are some exquisite singers. Eva, a soprano, is already at the LaGuardia school for the performing arts, which people of a certain age may think of as the Fame school.
“That’s really the story I’m trying to tell,” she says. “There’s this incredible power. Music and the arts give you other opportunities, not just financial opportunity, but the opportunity to see and enjoy and engage with the world in a new way.”
And, ultimately, as Choir Games shows, the ability to find common ground with people who live very different lives.
“Yeah,” says Pooley. “Even though these two groups come from entirely contrasting environments, their love of music and the part it plays in their lives connects them.”
Choir Games starts on Sky Open on Sunday, May 4, 7.30pm. Streaming on Neon, from May 4.
