Membership
Japanese and Swedish Sweet Adelines at Nikko Toshogu Shrine, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where they performed together as part of Friendship Week.
FRIENDSHIP WEEK – AN AMAZING EXPERIENCE! Swedish and Japanese choruses’ “small gathering” forges big connections
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ast November, 49 singers from three Swedish choruses—Gothia Show Chorus, Key Town Harmony and Västerås Show Chorus— went to Japan for a week of singing, education and bonding. Friendship Week was the result of two years’ preparation which started in October 2016 with a Gothia member (a former resident of Japan) writing a letter to Megumi Yamashiro, then-president of Tokyo Chorus, asking about the possibility of a get-together. Tokyo Chorus, which was quite small, asked themselves: “Can we do this?” “But if we don’t take this opportunity, we will never be able to have this kind of thing in the future. Opportunity knocks only once,” Yamashiro and her chorus decided. They imagined it might be a small friendly exchange, but it grew! The Swedish choruses decided to make the Japan trip a “Big Chorus Project.” Directors Maria Wessman, Annika Christensen and Marie Erenstedt combined the names of the three choruses, calling
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themselves GoKeyVäst, and created a site with music, learning tracks, choreography, handouts for the classes and the workshop program. The Swedish Embassy, celebrating 150 years of diplomatic relations between Japan and Sweden, backed the event. “Once in Japan, we began with a few days of sightseeing, beginning with Kiyomizu Temple and Fushimi Inari temple,” said Erenstedt. “We visited Mount Fuji, where we got to sing ‘Anthem’ on the terrace as high as you can come on Mount Fuji! At Lake Ashi, we ate black eggs (which make you live seven years longer!).” Member-at-large Mitsuko Yanagita arranged for the group to visit Nikko Toshogu Shrine, a 15th century shrine that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The shrine’s priest kindly accepted the offer for the chorus to sing there. Nothing like this had been done there before. “Some of the members in the Japanese choruses joined us on this trip, and for the last three songs in our 40-minute program, we invited them to sing with us,” said Erenstedt. “The performance was a purely magical experience. A large audience enjoyed the beautiful a cappella harmony in silence, surrounded by beautifully colored leaves
