1st International A Cappella Festival 08 : REPORT By Angelina Choo

1. Overview

Singapore’s first A Cappella Fest embarked on a successful opening and will see further and more exciting developments in the years to come.

From programming to audience feedback on experience and willingness to support to logistical management, the humble attempt to start an international level festival proved to be fulfilling for TAS and one that is filled with promise of developing into a substantial and staple programme for TAS.

2. Festival Programming

15^th & 16^th October 08 German Group, Vocal Dente

17^th October 08 Asian Night featuring NANU, Flexitones (Malaysian) &

JUZ B

18^th October 08 Jazz Night featuring TAS Singers, Blue Intentions& Key

Elements

Festival programming provided a well balanced and varied selection of fine a cappella groups from Singapore, Malaysia and Germany.

The careful selection of groups which did not overlap in style, approach and song selections provided a good mixture for presentation, flavour style and genres.

There were new teams like Blue Intentions, which is made up of singers combined from a few local groups, who have come together to tackle more intellectual musical expectations and then there was the TAS Singers which we are trying to develop into a stable team of high quality singers and therefore developing a new team but with musical finesse and good vocal quality.

And of course there were the stars of the evenings, groups like JUZ B and Key Elements who have been continuously hard at work for over 10 years in the music industry. This amount of work showed up in their presentations, repertoire, vocal agility and their superb blend and balance.

We also had a little surprise all the way from Johor Bahru, a team of young singers who are formally trained in singing and who have travelled to Austria (Graz) for the recent Choral Olympics and now to Singapore to share with us their brand of a cappella music which was a mix of choral and pop adaptations. They had the added element of dramatic play in their presentation which again provided a nice twist to the programming.

3. General Feedback

Each night, the audience members came out of the concerts asking for CDs from all the teams as well as many well-wishes for the festival.

They enjoyed the performances and on the whole had no complaints about the logistical elements of the concert from the free seating to the ushering and concert content.

We met many people who mentioned that they were fans of a cappella music and will continue to support the programmes.

Some were repeat audiences from other TAS productions earlier in the year, namely The Annual A Cappella Championships and also new audiences who were mesmerised by the singing of German group, Vocal Dente at their Takashimaya promotion.

The final evening was an evening of Key Element friends and family. The team sold over 70 tickets (almost 40% house) and contributed to the 97% sell out rate for that evening.

4. Ticket Sales

Ticket sales for the first 3 nights bordered on 50% while sales for the final evening rose to at least 97%.

Ticket sales for the first three nights could have been better.

Here are some areas to re-look for the next festival:

a. Asian Night is perhaps a rather broad term to market to a crowd who may not consider the repertoire line up as exciting. It could be alternatively be re-coined into Mando Pop Night and or Malay Pop Night in the near future to narrow down the theme for better marketing and communications.

b. Visiting teams have to communicate more openly about extra programme they may have while in Singapore so as to avoid and overlap of audience members needed at the show. Alternatively, we will only provide them with 1 evening show and not 2.

c. For this festival, we encouraged our groups to sell tickets to their friends and family in order to bring in a portion of the ticket sales. Some groups were very open to it but never quite delivered their share of the ticket sales. Only 1 group was successful in this and that was Key Elements. This shows that there is a need for local groups to really focus on audience building and fan building in their plans for growth. They should also be constantly performing to remain in the minds of the consumers.

5. Publicity & Marketing

We were included in the European Encore Season brochure and some online and on site publicity form the Arts House. We also purchased an ad in Time Out Magazine which proved to be a futile effort which will not be considered again.

We managed to garner promotional publicity to Kinokuniya’s membership list and to perform in store for a promotion.

We also were interviewed on News Radio 93.8fm (Vocal Dente).

The group Vocal Dente had workshops at the German School and a performance at the German Embassy where their tried to promote their tickets and CDs.

As with most of TAS; productions, as there is a severe lack of fulltime manpower, this element of marketing and publicity of our products is in need of assistance and attention. We relied heavily on our mailing list and word-of-mouth publicity to get the festival going and under all circumstances, it did pretty well.

With a stronger marketing and publicity plan and tighter management of its communication and sales plans, this event will surely develop into one that is much cherished and loved by our audience.

6. Audience Cross Section

At each concert there was an eclectic mix of audience and at least 50% were new audience for TAS.

We will continue to persevere in building up this audience base into a far larger one and one that is more active in supporting concerts and attempting to sing as well.

7. Festival Logistics

Logistically, The Arts House provided the much needed security and ease of traffic flow into the concert space.

We did end up having to rely largely on our producer to coordinate between the teams and the sound company and technician which should have been managed by a stage or technical manager. It was hard work for the Producer but it all worked out eventually.

Ticket counter management was one of the few things that were not up to expectations. The process was slow and often wrong information about group discounts were provided and sales were rejected and turned away due to sales staff not knowing the details. This area can be improved on by The Arts House.

8. Aspects to Improve On

We can consider how we can move away from the group by group presentations into perhaps solo group presentations with a larger variety of different shows presented as the group by group variety show concept may tire or bore the audience in the long term. Enlarging the realm of each group would also allow all shows to continuously build on audience capacity.

We could also consider a wider array of vocal performances to include comedy a cappella, solo acts amongst other ideas.

Marketing, sponsorship and publicity would really create the over and under the line buzz that TAS needs to build on its networking.

9. Aspects to Build On

The audience feedback was very positive and thus we will keep developing this festival for vocal music into one that is of international quality and one with a wide variety of acts.

We will also continue to urge local groups to be more strategic in their development plans and to continue to support them but also provide a firm direction for them to develop responsibly and for long term not short term.

We encouraged all teams to bring in their own sound engineer and this created an opportunity for them to be more responsible for their delivery and sound output as compared to most shows where they have been complaining a lot about how sound has been managed. This created more satisfaction for all parties.