Our humble community choir in Melbourne's west has no business hearing from one of the biggest bands in the world. But last week, we suddenly found ourselves sharing the stage with Coldplay.
Why else would someone claiming to work on Coldplay 's upcoming Melbourne shows lob into our inbox on a Saturday afternoon just before the band's arrival in Australia?
But it wasn't a hoax, it turns out … and 10 days later we're all on a charter bus, under slept, jangling with nerves and bound for Marvel Stadium to sing with Chris Martin at each one of Melbourne's four sold-out shows, in front of more than 50,000 people a night.Seeing the inner workings of a global machine that's just ticked over the billion-dollar mark in worldwide ticket sales has been something else. Wildly impressive is understating it.
The enormity of what we're about to do here has hit me as I'm looking out at the empty seats of a gargantuan venue that yawns up at the open sky. A member of the stage crew comes over to reassure us that the flames that'll shoot up into the air behind us as we sing will produce a bit of heat but pose no danger. Flames, you say?As the opening piano notes of Clocks ring out over the stadium to rapturous cheers and applause, we're ushered by torchlight up the stairs to the side of stage … and I make a silent agreement with myself that this number will be my pump-up song for the rest of my days.
Then the song we're singing on starts up, and we're striding out onto that epic stage, propelled by adrenaline and a panoramic view of that sea of twinkling lights, audience members hopping like rabbits, faces upturned with wonder.We're singing to the audience, to each other, and to the band members, who generously give us their beaming smiles and eye contact, because for a fleeting moment, we're all doing this crazy thing together.
"NOTHING is going to be better than that. Ever!" says one of our singers as we float back to our dressing room, jabbering to each other, trying to quantify what just happened there.We still can't fully grasp how the past week of Coldplay show experience came to be for us. We're a non-auditioned, community choir of people who simply love to sing together.
Choir Tamara Oudyn Melbourne Community Singing ABC Newsreader
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