Lifestyle
They are singing with strangers and stars.
The choir, which started with six people in a Brooklyn living room, now has people traveling 10,000 miles to perform in the basement of a former church next to masked supermodels and Broadway's hottest stars to perform songs like Fleetwood Mac and others. It has received enough attention to sing Taylor Swift's praises.
With no professional training or auditions required, Gaia Music Collective welcomes up to 200 strangers to its Bushwick event space and performs songs like Taylor Swift's “Cruel Summer,” Fleetwood Mac's “Landslide,” and Rihanna's ” They will improvise harmonies to songs such as “Diamond”.
Supermodel Cara Delevingne took on the alto part after registering under the pseudonym “June,” while Hamilton star Leslie Odom Jr. led the singalong. And singer Natasha Bedingfield has recruited some musicians to sing her song “Your Child, My Child” with singer Milk.
“There were six of us in the living room. We had friends we met from a cappella and theater in college, and even though we weren't professional musicians growing up, we just wanted an outlet to sing once in a while.” says vocalist Matt Goldstein. The arranger, singer and songwriter, who started Gaia in June 2021, told the Post.
Goldstein and co-creator Hannah Tobias quickly outgrew their living room, renting an event space in Bushwick in April 2022 and starting sending out invitations.
People register for events such as one-day choirs on Gaia's social channels. From there, Goldstein and the Gaia team select popular songs and send recorded harmonies for alto, soprano, tanner and bass parts for people to hear up until the day of the event. cost? Pay-what-you-can sliding scale prices range from $11 to $33.
Singers gather like a flash mob and sing for three hours, sometimes all day.
Gaia currently has 315,000 TikTok followers and had a waiting list of 300 people when she announced plans for her “Landslide” sessions.
People regularly traveled from New Jersey and Pennsylvania to participate, and even flew in from Jamaica, Berlin, Germany, and even Australia.
“This has been a wild journey,” Goldstein said.
Broadway stars Chibueze Ifuoma and “Hadestown” star Britt West stopped by last month to perform solos while more than 170 people harmonized.
In February, “Hamilton” star Odom Jr. performed harmonies on a new song surrounded by 200 strangers.
Aaron Lewis, 32, first attended Gaia after seeing it on social media while visiting from Clinton Township, Michigan, in 2022.
He booked a round-trip trip just to sing Gene Wilder's “Pure Imagination,” and then moved to New York last year, partly because of his choir work.
“I thought, 'Oh, this is everything I love. Why wouldn't I be a part of this?'” said Lewis of Sunset Park, who sings bass.
“That was definitely a big factor in wanting to make New York home.”
Lewis recalled that during a session last June, he recognized the alto singer wearing a bucket hat as Delevingne. “It was cool to see her being proactive without trying to make a big scene or wanting to be recognized,” he said.
“It's so exciting to see who comes up. Some of the people who are in corporate jobs or science jobs, I'm so burnt out that I have to remember why I love music in the first place. Some say no.”
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