On a recent Friday night, dozens of people crowded inside Ruba Club in Northern Liberties, holding sheets with lyrics to Sufjan Stevens’ song, “Chicago,” printed on them.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” they sing in unison, as Philly music teacher Melissa Schepers turns this random group of friends and neighbors into an impromptu choir. This is the Fishtown Choir experience.
“A lot of people have come and been like, ‘Where’s the choir?’ They don’t realize that they’re the choir,” Schepers said. “So it’s really fun when we have people come and some know that they’re going to be singing and some don’t, and it just ends in a really nice community night of song.”
Brian Adoff came up with the idea of a community choir. The self-described former music store nerd recruited his good friend Schepers and the two of them have been at it for a couple of years now.
“The first one we did, we had between 80 or 90 people that just showed up, not knowing what they were getting into. We didn’t tell them what songs they were singing,” Adoff said. “When someone walks into here, sometimes they don’t know what to expect.”
Fishtown Choir meets every month or so at different venues and bars in the city. There’s no sheet music and participants are handed a lyric sheet.
“They mingle, come to the bar, get a drink, and then usually half an hour later or an hour later, we’ll start. Sometimes we do a warmup,” said Schepers. “It’s all popular music. We don’t do anything obscure.”
In the past, Fishtown Choir has sung songs like Beyonce’s “Halo”, “Rich Girl” by Hall & Oates, and “Dancing in the Dark” by The Boss, Bruce Springsteen.
“We did a fundraiser for the Lutheran Settlement House, which is a great organization in the Fishtown neighborhood, where we did Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. And that was really nice and a lot of crying at the end of that one,” Adoff recalled.
“Some people are professional singers that come, but a lot of people that sang in choir in high school. And there’s people like me that were never allowed to be in choir,” Schepers said. “By the end everybody’s singing. And for the most part, they all sound pretty good.
“Everyone who’s here wants to be here and is making beautiful community together.”
