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00:00Hello.
00:17Astrid Jorgensen fronts one of Australia's biggest musical acts,
00:21where it's the audience who does most of the performing.
00:24Astrid's taken pub choir from small suburban bars
00:27to the world stage, where she gets massive crowds
00:30to sing in three-part harmony.
00:33It's a huge achievement for a woman
00:35who's always had a love-hate relationship with music.
00:49I despise sounds.
00:53Like, I am infuriated by the sound of other people being alive,
00:56which is crazy, because at my show,
00:58that is the only thing you can hear.
01:03Astrid has a very strong aversion to sounds,
01:09background noise, and particularly human-made noise,
01:13like sniffing and coughing and swallowing and things like that.
01:18I don't fully understand it,
01:24but she has sort of that double-edged relationship with noise.
01:31My favourite sound is people at pub choir.
01:39Welcome to the stage, pub choir's Astrid Jorgensen!
01:42I run the biggest choir in the world
01:47where I try to convince groups of untrained strangers
01:52to learn a song in three-part harmony.
01:55I have invented a low voice so that I can save a little bit of money.
01:58I can do it all. You know what I mean?
01:59So this is a low voice.
02:01Every show, I try and have a transformation
02:03between me and the audience where I start out as the performer
02:07and they are the audience, and then by the end, I hope to switch.
02:09Blue, obviously, you sing the melody.
02:11Oh, I don't need you anymore!
02:14She is a trained choral conductor.
02:18She knows how to deconstruct music
02:20and put it back together again
02:22to promote this idea that music is for everyone.
02:25Oh, I don't need you anymore!
02:30Everyone has had a voice crack or been laughed at,
02:32been told that their voice is out of tune,
02:34and it feels very personal because it is.
02:37Here we go, Chicago.
02:38Five, six, seven, six!
02:40One of my main motivations is to be like,
02:42it doesn't matter.
02:46Our voices are unique to us,
02:49and with the help of other people,
02:51anyone can make, you know, beautiful art.
02:53She's an original.
03:01She's one of a kind.
03:03Inspiring joy and enthusiasm in people
03:10is not an easy task.
03:12Communicating why it feels good to sing all together,
03:18that's a real gift.
03:20I'm not great at any particular instrument,
03:31but my brain is kind of the instrument,
03:34and understanding that about myself
03:36was like, it just shaped and changed the rest of my life.
03:40I say, I really don't think you're strong enough, no!
03:46I have been running Pub Choir for eight years.
04:02Hello!
04:03It has led me to so many unexpected places,
04:06so many unexpected big interactions.
04:08So, who are you?
04:09My name's Astrid. I'm 34 years old.
04:13Very recently, I auditioned for America's Got Talent.
04:18It was broadcast while we were on tour in the US.
04:22We actually watched it in a laundry of a hotel.
04:25It was the only TV that we could get to work.
04:27You are the act. You try.
04:29And since my audition has aired,
04:31they posted it online,
04:32and over 70 million people have watched this audition.
04:37That's an unfathomable number.
04:38From watching my sister sit in her bedroom,
04:42listening to the Spice Girls,
04:44to then seeing a clip of her on a stage with the Spice Girl
04:47giving an opinion about my sister's performance,
04:51yeah, I mean, what world does that happen?
04:52This is your audition, not their audition.
04:56You know what I mean?
04:56I think what you did was really smart.
05:00Yes!
05:02And I've started to get quite a lot of interest
05:05from people around the world,
05:06and even a little bit in Australia,
05:07as if this was a miraculous thing that happened.
05:10I'm happy for people to think that,
05:12but I would prefer that they see
05:15that it was something that was built up to.
05:19She's worked very, very hard for it,
05:21and I think she deserves all the success that she has.
05:23But she's had an unusual relationship with music
05:29in that she both loved and hated it at times throughout her life.
05:33I have been making this space for the last 35 years.
05:43Music kind of got infused into the children's lives at some point,
05:48either listening to it or they took up some instrument.
05:51We had a piano, and she would just toy on it.
05:55I have some vague memories of learning
05:59that it's very important that you need to lift your wrists up.
06:02My wrists are down,
06:04and I'm probably not hitting the keys very well,
06:06and then look at this.
06:07I've practised the piano,
06:09and my wrists are up.
06:10Astrid has just got this creative gift right from the beginning.
06:16When she was at the piano,
06:17she could pick up things more quickly than the boys.
06:22Mum and Dad, you know, they got married in New Zealand
06:24and had five kids in the space in nine years.
06:29Mum was born in Singapore,
06:30but she had naturalised as an Australian,
06:33and she had always kind of wanted to go back to Australia.
06:36They moved to Australia to escape anti-Asian racism,
06:43and they moved to Queensland in 1998.
06:46It was the height of Pauline Hanson.
06:49I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians.
06:56At school, someone would be kind of speaking about
06:59how there's too many Asians.
07:01I'd be like, well, I'm an Asian,
07:03and people would disagree with me.
07:04They'd say, well, you're not really...
07:06Like, we don't see you like that.
07:08We don't see you as an other kind of person.
07:10So, I don't know.
07:11I think I just tried to push it to the side a bit.
07:18I don't know who it is who convinced Asian immigrants
07:21that the height of success is to be a master of the violin.
07:25I would say that person, you know,
07:27should face some pretty hard questions,
07:29whoever they are.
07:33Astrid would go off to violin lessons every Saturday.
07:35One of my older brothers, Phillip,
07:38got on really well with this teacher,
07:39and I observed her getting on well with, I think,
07:42all of the other students.
07:43But I had a very hard time emotionally with this teacher,
07:47and she did not like me, and I did not like her.
07:52I thought that music was torture during this time,
07:58so it was very confusing,
07:59because music is the most natural thing
08:01that I have going on in my body and in my brain.
08:03And I would turn up once a week,
08:05and someone would sort of yell at me,
08:06just stand over me and just say,
08:07you're really stupid, and you're so bad at music.
08:12And then I would go do my violin exams and get an A+.
08:14My mum would drop me off to my lessons
08:18and pick me up at the end.
08:21But then one lesson, my dad had to pick me up.
08:26I heard the teacher talking to Astrid in a derogatory way,
08:31and I thought, oh, my God, this is terrible.
08:34And I was just, like, sobbing uncontrollably on the floor,
08:36and this adult person was yelling at me.
08:39I can't remember what she was saying, but it wasn't good.
08:41We just picked up the violin.
08:42I said, come on, Astrid, let's go.
08:46It feels like looking at, like, your ex or something,
08:49where it didn't quite work out,
08:50but not because anything was wrong.
08:51It was just the wrong time or something.
08:53Like, I just feel like, thank you.
08:55What a beautiful moment we shared
08:58that didn't work out for me.
09:02I ended up just hating music for a bit.
09:04I didn't take music as a subject at high school for ages.
09:07I didn't want to be a part of it.
09:08I found it really confusing,
09:09and I thought, music's not for me.
09:12The violin didn't work out,
09:15but at the same time,
09:17there was this other parallel part of her journey.
09:23My precious.
09:25My sister and I loved pop music.
09:28So I used to lay out all of my CDs on my bedspread,
09:30like little treasures,
09:31and just go through them,
09:32like, almost like stock take every night.
09:34She would sit in her room and have the stereo going,
09:38listening to B105, Hot 30 Countdown,
09:41with Kyle and Jackie O.
09:42Oh, my God.
09:43Ooh.
09:47Astrid's schmozzle.
09:48One night, I decided to call up
09:51when they invited listeners to call up and write a song,
09:55and I said something stupid,
09:56and then 10 seconds later, I was off air,
09:58and they offered to send me a free CD.
10:01And I didn't have money to buy CDs,
10:04but I was, like, obsessed with music,
10:05so I wanted more CDs.
10:08It was a childhood of crime, if I'm being honest.
10:10And it worked for a little while,
10:14but I had called the radio so much
10:16that they started to remember my name,
10:18and then the producer was, like,
10:19you can't call anymore.
10:20You have too many CDs.
10:22Like, you're hogging the CDs.
10:23And I was, like, this is my only CD pipeline.
10:27So then I started to call up as other people.
10:29I'd be, like, hello, Kira here.
10:32Like...
10:32Oh, Kira, Kira.
10:34And then Astrid would adopt this other voice of the alter ego
10:38so she could take home the free CD for the week.
10:41So, yeah, it was a pretty good gig
10:43that she had going there for a while.
10:45This is full of bops.
10:47I never got found out.
10:49If you're finding this out now...
10:50You're the radio station, I'm really sorry.
10:53MUSIC PLAYS
11:08I was the youngest student at my whole school by a year.
11:13I just felt little and small and insignificant
11:16when I got to high school.
11:20When I watched the talent contest at school,
11:23I saw how that was a pathway to be seen.
11:28That was a way to exist in the minds of others.
11:32I guess it's not nice feeling lonely.
11:36So I just thought, I'll enter the next heat.
11:40I had all of my favourite song lyrics out on my wall in my bedroom
11:45and I just looked at the walls
11:46looking for the one that stood out to me.
11:48And A Thousand Miles, as soon as I saw it, I was like,
11:52that's how I'm going to win friends and influence people.
11:54MUSIC PLAYS
11:55And I walked downstairs to the piano and played it.
12:04Like, I'd never thought to do that before.
12:06I'd never been like, I love this song, I'll go and play it.
12:08I didn't know that you could just do that.
12:10And now I wonder
12:12If I could fall into the sky
12:17The crowd went off.
12:20School went crazy, she loved it.
12:22MUSIC PLAYS
12:22Oh, cos you know I'd walk a thousand miles
12:28If I could just see you tonight
12:33The whole audience, like hundreds of kids, were like,
12:37And I was like, this was easy.
12:40This was such an easy win.
12:42MUSIC PLAYS
12:43And so, yeah, that sort of clicked a little something in my brain
12:51where I'm like, music is such an easy way to connect with people.
12:54MUSIC PLAYS
12:56In high school, I didn't love a lot of those years.
13:10I didn't really have a place.
13:12MUSIC PLAYS
13:14I think mental illness, it's an accumulation of many things.
13:20I put my fingers down my throat and threw up
13:26when I would have been, you know, maybe around 17.
13:30MUSIC PLAYS
13:31But I had a disordered relationship with eating
13:35for a...far before that first time.
13:38MUSIC PLAYS
13:41I went through school
13:44very convinced that I was an ugly person.
13:47And watched the relationships of many of my peers
13:54and other people at school,
13:56and it just seemed to bypass me.
13:58MUSIC PLAYS
13:59I think that's what drew me a little bit to nunhood.
14:02MUSIC PLAYS
14:04I wanted some peace and quiet.
14:09I loved the idea of not having to pick your outfits.
14:12MUSIC PLAYS
14:13We have an aunt who lived in Zambia then,
14:16and who was a nun with the Franciscan missionaries in Lusaka.
14:21MUSIC PLAYS
14:22That's my aunt up the top right, actually.
14:24Uh, Sister Jacinta.
14:25And, uh, you can already see that Astrid's already trying
14:28to cosplay as a nun here.
14:29MUSIC PLAYS
14:30I went to meet my auntie,
14:32and I lived in a convent for two months when I was 16.
14:35I would wake up at, like, 5am every day
14:37and go to mass and pray five times a day.
14:39MUSIC PLAYS
14:40When I arrived at, like, my first church service in Zambia,
14:44I was over-awed.
14:46Everyone in this space was singing as loud as they could,
14:49but no-one cared.
14:51Like, we were not perceiving each other.
14:52It was, like, an act of service for each other.
14:55It was the most incredible music I've ever heard.
14:59MUSIC PLAYS
15:00It really affected her understanding of what can be done
15:03just by improvisation as a community, you know?
15:06You don't need musical training to have a great time with music.
15:09MUSIC PLAYS
15:12I was having huge spiritual revelations in Zambia,
15:17but it was the music that was blowing my mind, not Jesus.
15:20But I really...
15:21I thought it was Jesus for a while.
15:23That's it.
15:24Eben loves collecting records.
15:27He's got such a good collection.
15:30So, when we met in uni was when she was just starting
15:33to change her mind about wanting to become a nun.
15:36We ended up in lots of each other's classes,
15:39even though we did some pretty random subjects.
15:42I tried to get into a music course at university.
15:46They did not accept me into the opera course.
15:48Very fair.
15:50And so I just walked around the subject selection day
15:54looking for things to do.
15:56And I added just one music subject, ear training, oral musicianship.
16:00You're very good at musical thinking.
16:02I don't have, like, an instrument external to my body.
16:06What set her apart from other people in music
16:08was she has a very strong natural ability
16:12for this thing called audiation.
16:15I find it hard to describe what audiation is.
16:17How do you describe it?
16:18Hearing music in your brain when it's not playing out loud.
16:23I think when a lot of people listen to music,
16:25they imagine one thing.
16:26Like, you might listen to the lyrics
16:27or you might like listening to the guitar solo or something.
16:32And so I would describe that as, like, horizontal listening.
16:35You like listening to the music kind of as it travels in time.
16:40But I've always been able to hear the music vertically as well,
16:42like, lots of different textures
16:44and, like, imagine how the song fits together.
16:47And I realised that that is my musical skill.
16:53I mean, I guess, like,
16:55I don't really know how to play any songs on the guitar,
16:59but if I needed to figure it out, I can.
17:03That was the final piece of the puzzle,
17:06where I realised that you can be musical
17:09and you don't need to play an instrument for that to be true.
17:19We both graduated uni with a Bachelor of Arts
17:21and realised that that is not actually a career pathway
17:25specifically for anything.
17:27Um, so, Evan went on and studied medicine.
17:30I didn't know what else to do,
17:33so I got a teacher's qualification as well.
17:37That's when I started writing music,
17:38conducting more choirs,
17:41becoming a musician in the community
17:44while I was a high school teacher.
17:49I used to be a schoolteacher,
17:51and can I just say,
17:52I think schoolteachers work harder than anyone.
17:54You have the best...
17:55Bastra did not enjoy being a high school music teacher at all.
17:59And then, shake enough that it starts to affect your face a bit.
18:02It was the most awful job for me.
18:04I hated every second of it and every element of it.
18:07Use your face up...
18:09I respond to energy.
18:11With children and teenagers,
18:14even if it's the best day of their life,
18:15they will never communicate that with their face.
18:18You'll never...
18:21I was just becoming crazy
18:23and then feeling stupid at the end of every day.
18:25I was like, I have got to find a better way
18:29to channel this huge bubble of anxious energy.
18:32Um, in a way that people want.
18:34I suggested that she might consider
18:37being an air traffic controller.
18:39Try and sing.
18:40She passed all of the, um, aptitude testing
18:43and all of the other tests that were required.
18:45Are you ready to learn a crazy harmony?
18:47I was invited to an in-person interview.
18:50It's the final step.
18:51It had been going for months and months.
18:53And that same week,
18:54I got this email from a school in Townsville.
18:58They wanted to make every single student at the school
19:02sing in a compulsory choir.
19:05Sit on the edge of your chair because you love choir.
19:07I cancelled my air traffic control meeting.
19:09And then when you get to the chorus,
19:10bring it.
19:11I stood on the stage at the school assembly.
19:15I'd never done it before,
19:16but I just knew how to get 500 kids singing.
19:19If you want to go somewhere,
19:21you better wake up and pay attention.
19:25And I realised that that's the version of music
19:29I had been looking for all along.
19:32The non-competitive, big, welcoming, experiential version of music.
19:39And that was the direct precursor to pub choir.
19:47She had this idea that she was just going to get a couple of her mates
19:50to come and sing together at this bar in Brisbane.
19:53And, you know, you're passing by.
19:55You see, oh, I can go in here and have a sing for the price of a beer.
20:00Why not?
20:04I mean, teaching unwilling teenagers is pretty similar to teaching drunk adults.
20:09So it was like quite a lot of crossover in skill set.
20:14I just needed to go first.
20:16That's the thing that I knew instinctively.
20:18I will sing every line and just copy me.
20:20We'll just call and response it.
20:23I got this call being like,
20:26hey, um, can you come film this gig?
20:28I thought it might be karaoke or something like that.
20:31And then it was like, oh, the audience are the ones singing.
20:36Elvira and I went along.
20:38We all received a little piece of paper and the place was packed.
20:41She just stood up the front and taught this stuff from a lyric sheet in three parts.
20:47I was so nervous before the show.
20:51And the second that it started, I just knew what to do and say.
20:54She is taking existing popular songs, deconstructing them by listening to them hundreds and hundreds
21:01of times, finding ways to rearrange them and then present it to a crowd.
21:07It was something that people hadn't really seen before.
21:09And it was kind of magical seeing like three part harmony actually come together.
21:17I felt something really different like in my heart.
21:20I'm like, something has changed.
21:22My life has changed.
21:23I don't know how, but this is different now that I've done pub choir.
21:26I remember getting a message being like, hey, this has gone really well.
21:34Like the video is really big.
21:35Let's do it again.
21:41Pub choir is the smallest crew of people.
21:44And for at least the first two years, I did everything off stage myself.
21:51So I was booking the venues, finding the licenses for the songs.
21:55I was taking phone calls and complaints.
21:58It actually got so out of control that I bought a burner phone and I created a fake assistant.
22:05Hi, thanks for calling pub choir.
22:07This is Kirsten.
22:08Sometimes dealing with some aspects of the music industry can be difficult being, you know,
22:14not listened to or they'll ask the nearest man the questions that should be directed to Astrid as the boss.
22:21Many people have talked down to me over the years to do with pub choir
22:25because they see me as a person who couldn't possibly be in charge, who couldn't possibly have thought of this.
22:32There seems to be a problem with the pre-sales.
22:35Eventually, I realised that I needed a person in the real world to help me.
22:39It was supposed to be full capacity.
22:41So about two years in, I hired John Patterson, who has been pub choir's manager ever since.
22:45Ooh, yeah, it's just an ooh, yeah.
22:48She invited me to a show and I was like, this is magic.
22:52Like, she's casting a spell.
22:54Like, she's using her hands and casting a spell on the audience.
22:57I was like, I'll do the work.
22:59But yeah, you're in charge.
23:06It was just exponentially growing.
23:08Each gig was twice the size of the last.
23:10The momentum was enormous.
23:15She sort of sold out these larger and larger venues in Brisbane.
23:21Then decided to start touring Australia.
23:23That continued to work well.
23:29And then got booked for South by Southwest in Austin, Texas,
23:33which is this huge, world-famous, amazing festival.
23:37And that was probably going to be the big international break.
23:40But that's when the COVID pandemic began.
23:42Heightened states of emergency across the nation.
23:45California shutting down bars and wineries and asking those...
23:48We were in San Francisco when a mandate came through that no-one could go out.
23:53Aussies are being urged to board planes and head for home.
23:56And then so we just had to pack up and go to the airport.
23:5920,000 tickets disappeared overnight.
24:01The federal government banning a non-essential indoor gathering.
24:06It was a terrible time to be a live musician.
24:12Something that Astrid's very good at and something that I admire about her
24:15is she's very quick to pivot.
24:18And she came up with the idea of couch choir.
24:20Welcome to our first attempt at couch choir.
24:24We have sung through three different harmonies for Close To You by The Carpenters.
24:29So you record yourself singing your part.
24:32And when you're happy with it, you're going to send it back to us.
24:35And Astrid and John were like,
24:36hey, we've got an idea to keep our jobs.
24:39How about we do a virtual kind of choir like Astrid normally does,
24:45get a lot of submissions and get people to send it in.
24:47I'm going to sing through the whole part from start to finish.
24:51And I'm going to sing the guy's part.
25:02I thought a hundred would be awesome.
25:04That's quite a big choir already, but a thousand was unbelievable.
25:07We weren't ready for that.
25:08Like me, they long to be close to you.
25:14We'd never done it before.
25:15No one told us how, there was no app.
25:17We just figured it out in real time because we cared and we were motivated.
25:28Hundreds of everyday Aussies singing the one song from the comfort of their very own couch.
25:33You know, in this moment of real sadness and anxiety around the world,
25:37she found a way to bring people together, even from within their own homes.
25:42You know, it was a brilliant, brilliant idea.
25:44And it was playing immediately all around the world.
25:48A thousand people from 18 countries took part in this virtual choir performance.
25:53Close to you.
25:55People started following us from all these new places.
25:58And it, like, helped me express my idea in places that would have never heard about pub choir.
26:15I've done the soundcheck.
26:17People are starting to arrive.
26:18I think we have our first show in two years.
26:20It's wild.
26:21It was so hard to get people to buy tickets once the COVID restrictions lifted.
26:29I cannot believe.
26:31I have so many goosebumps.
26:32It is amazing to see you.
26:36Prior to COVID, people were buying a thousand tickets in a minute.
26:40And then after COVID, the venues, even when the restrictions were lifted and it could be full capacity,
26:45we were selling half capacity because people just weren't keen.
26:51The person who changed that for me was Kate Bush.
27:00Wrote a beautiful string arrangement and everything just worked that night quite well.
27:04And when the video came out, Kate Bush shared it.
27:07Kate Bush is notoriously very private and doesn't chit chat and give lots of media interviews.
27:25So this was such a rare email that was sent.
27:28And it caught the attention of so many people around the world that from that show,
27:33from Kate Bush onwards, every show has been sold out from then on.
27:44Choirs are a very old idea, but it seems to have struck a chord with people.
27:50I had 5,000 people the other day in Sydney and in Melbourne and there'll be 7,000 at Christmas in Brisbane.
27:57And there were 10,000 people in America who came to shows.
28:01I keep thinking to myself, like, I wonder if I'm like a fraud. Do people know that this is a choir lesson?
28:08Two minutes, two minutes, two minutes.
28:10Stephen and I pinch ourselves.
28:17Hello, Brisbane!
28:19And I said, you know, that's our daughter, you know, sort of thing.
28:23I have both, you know.
28:24This is the tempo.
28:26This is our first attempt, maybe of two, possibly of three.
28:30OK, here we go.
28:31She has tapped into something in our culture at this point of time.
28:41It's not just going and listening, it's wanting to be a participant.
28:47It's about togetherness and it's about an experience that can only happen
28:55in a real life space with human beings in a room together.
28:59And that to me is, we need more of those kind of experiences in our lives.
29:04I tried so many musical things before pub choir just because I knew I was musical.
29:14But all of the things that I tried were very inauthentic to me.
29:21What a relief that the real thing is the one that people have responded to.
29:26What a treat.
29:27I just get to be myself on stage and people clap.
29:31That's crazy.
29:48Anything is possible!
29:49What a treat!
29:55Yay!
29:56Oh, my God!
29:58You're all done.
29:59I always hate it.
30:06OK.
30:07All right.
30:08Let's struggle with the punch.
30:09Let's struggle with the punch.
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30:18
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