One of the more curious hits of Coachella and SXSW was Scala and Kolacny Brothers, an all-female Belgian choir led by a pair of dynamic siblings, Steven and Stijn Kolacny. Their haunting covers of rock hits, like Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" or Radiohead's "Creep," which appeared in a trailer for "The Social Network," grace their new, self-titled album.
Scala and Kolacny Brothers will play New York's Webster Hall on April 28 and recently, Steven, Stijn and fifteen members of Scala visited WFUV and The Alternate Side's Studio A and talked about their circumstances that led to their flip from a classical canon to contemporary rock. Their full conversation with Claudia Marshall will air on WFUV this Wednesday, April 27 at 9 p.m., but you can check out their interview and performance below:
Claudia Marshall: Steven and Stijn, you were directing choirs, arranging and producing and one of you had the brilliant idea of doing classical music [to do contemporary music].
Steven Kolacny: That was me! It wasn’t Stijn! He was a little bit afraid, maybe.
Claudia: There might be a little ambivalence now. Is that true?
Stijn Kolacny: In the beginning I wasn’t a fan of the idea. I was a bit afraid, exactly, because at the time we were a classical choir with a more conservative audience and I didn’t want to lose that. It was a risk.
Claudia: I understand that the first performance, where you switched it up a little bit and did a classical choir do a rock song didn’t go over with the judges, but the audience loved it.
Steven: Yes, that was in Canada at a classical choir festival. We were in the final round and Scala was allowed to choose it’s own repertoire. I think we did, what was it from Garbage?
Stijn: I think “Paranoid.” Stephen: Yes and the jury, the old guys, taking care of who is the winner and who is the loser, were shocked. But I understand, of course, because of the lyrics. You don’t do things like that with a classical choir. So we were disqualified officially.
Claudia: You were kicked out?
Steven: Yes, we were kicked out, but the audience - like 5000 people - they liked it. But they were youngters.
Claudia: So you knew you had something happening.
Stijn: It was a certain vibe, yes.
Claudia: So fastforward to last year when one of the hottest movies of the year, “The Social Network,” is about to come out and the trailer arrives in movie theatres. It’s your choir’s music. That’s a huge breakthrough.
Stijn: Yes, they used our version of “Creep” by Radiohead. The first time I saw the trailer, I was really thrilled. Really emotional. It fits very well, the music and the trailer. It changed our professional life quite a bit.
Steven: It’s like asking David Fincher to make a video clip for Scala. That was it. Quite a shock.
Claudia: And you didn’t have to pay him!
Steven: No! They paid us!
Claudia: Now it’s probably not the first time that a classical choir has sung songs like this, but it sounds, gentlemen, like you made quite a splash when you made that shift.
Steven: I’m quite that sure that there are other choirs singing rock and pop music, but I don’t they handle the choir like we do. We try to use the choir as a rock band or rock singers. We have many girls, but for us, that’s the lead singing part. It’s not like having a choir and making them sing popular music like Michael Jackson or Madonna or the Beatles, like you can hear in elevators. What we like is real rock stuff.
Claudia: It has more edge to it than other choirs.
Stijn: I think the sound is quite different. They’re singing mutable parts, but the way of singing is quite different. We emphasize more lyrics, the meaning of words, and one unique sound. It sounds like one voice. Not too powerful.
Claudia: Katrine, as a member of the choir, I’m sure it’s unusual to be singled out, but is it more difficult to sing in this style than in a classical repertoire?
Katrine: I think it’s a little more difficult, yes, because we have these unique sounds and you have to fit in as a singer. Most of the time, when you hear choirs the people are more likely to express themselves as a solo singer. In this choir, it’s more one sound, one feeling that we have to give to the audience.
Claudia: You also have musical challenges, like the phrasing, words or intervals that you might not sing in a classical setting. Like that word in Radiohead’s song.
Katrine: We did the SXSW festival in Texas and every time we said the word, it was like, “Yeah, cool man!”
Steven: People started applauding. It’s really weird, being a European, because it’s so common. It has nothing to do with that in Belgium or Europe, but this is the US.
Claudia: I don’t know what happened to our culture! Let me just apologize because we’re very tense about those things. You mentioned playing SXSW and at Stubbs BBQ, which is a legendary Austin venue, not generally the type of place where a classical choir will perform. What was that like?
Katrine: It was really nice because we were told about famous Stubbs and being there was amazing. It’s not something we do often and the people reacting so well, it was really nice to perform there.
Claudia: The age range of the choir is?
Katrine: 20 to 30.
Claudia: Is this a full-time job for you?
Stijn: Most of them are students and some of them work. Some have children which isn’t easy. We have 230 singers and about ten of them have children. But as a student it’s not easy to combine things; we play more than 100 shows a year, most of them abroad. You need a good husband!
Claudia: As for the selection of the choir when you audition new members - do you look for a different quality of voice or presentation than you might if you were auditioning members for a more traditional presentation?
Steven: Absolutely. We do auditions twice a year and what I look for is nice voices, of course, who have trained a lot in other choirs and who can read notes fast. But a voice that doesn’t sound too solo. We don’t need 200 Maria Callases in the hall.
Claudia: They need to blend.
Steven: Absolutely. Blend with the other voices and then when they start singing with us it’s really remarkable that they need time to fit in. Most of them need half a year or a year to really blend with the other voices before they understand well how we’d like them to sing. We need time and they need time. Not an easy-going thing.
Claudia: From the selection of the individuals to the material, can you talk a little bit about that process? How you narrow down which songs are going to work in this milieu? Are there songs that just don’t work for the choir?
Steven: Yes, of course. Sometimes I have people giving me ideas like, you should do “Angels” from Robbie Williams which is a really bad idea. Or “Like A Virgin” from Madonna, which is a really stupid idea.
Claudia: Why is that stupid? Stephen: If the original song is too popular I think the audience won’t believe it. Trying to be popular with the choir and singing popular songs, it’s cheesy. Nobody expects a girls’ choir to be singing Metallica or Peter Gabriel or Radiohead or Muse.
Claudia: So you’re going for something more surprising. The presentation on stage involves blue light and multimedia.
Stijn: Yes, it’s quite dark.
Steven: No one expects that nice, pretty girls with lots of brains would be singing in a dark choir. It’s a kind of dark choir.
Stijn: Scala live is really something quite emotional.
Claudia: Is it very competitive to get into the choir now?
Steven: Every week we get applications. In Belgium a lot of girls want to be a part of it. And we now have more than 200 singers so we don’t really need many more.
Claudia: Not every choir coming out of Belgium is plays Stubbs or Coachella. What is the reception from a rock or pop audience? Is there a moment where the audience is looking at you, going “What is this?”
Stephen: There was a positive review after the Stubbs show and in it, the journalist said that there was nothing like [us] at SXSW. You can’t compare Scala to another band playing at Coachella either. I think that’s a good think for us. The least you could say about Scala is that we stand - how do you say it in English? We stand out.
