Regardless of whether you are singing solo or in a chorus, songs have some magical force that tugs everyone’s heartstrings. In the same vein, songs have a mysterious power to bring people’s hearts closer together. This mysterious power has a greater impact when music is sung together in harmony by many people in a chorus. The KU Professor’s Singing Club is made up of members who all believe in the mysterious power of chorus music.
The KU Professor’s Singing Club is a private and voluntary gathering of professors from Kyungnam University, who enjoy music and love singing together. The club was established in 2013 by several professors from the College of Education and the College of Natural Science who were keenly interested in singing and playing music. At first, it was nothing more than a social gathering of professors, but the number of professors participating in the club gatherings and activities soon increased and the size of the club was expanded to all the colleges of the university. When Prof. Park Eun-ju of the Department of Food and Nutrition was selected as the first president of the club, she wanted to change the nature of the club to a performance group rather than just a hobby group. For this purpose, the club invited Prof. Lee Jong-hoon of the Department of Music Education as a conductor and director and started to prepare for its first public performance through weekly practice activities.
In October, 2014, the first mini-sized concert of the club was performed in front of many students and fellow professors at Hanmagwan, a student union building. This concert was a wellreceived, successful performance that won the hearts of the audience. Encouraged by the first concert’s success, the club actively planned and prepared for regular and large-scaled concerts in a more systematic way. For the next three years, the club successfully held a couple of guerrilla concerts in the University Library, and it was often invited as a guest performer in the conferences of local organizations. It was not until 2017 that the inaugural concert of the club was held in Hanmamiraegwan. The concert was a big success, and the whole audience was deeply fascinated by the club’s professional level of singing and performance. Since 2017’s big concert, the club has been holding regular and irregular performances every year, except for the three COVID-19 anticontagion years.
The song repertoire of the club performances is not restricted to any certain genre of music, but it usually consists of diverse songs, including old folk songs with traditional lyrics and tunes, modern pop songs well known to people, and even Korean pop songs commonly known as trot songs. In particular, Korean pop songs such as ‘Sarangbi (Love Rain)’ or ‘Dance with DJ DOC’ are used to set the festive mood among university students, and American folk songs such as ‘The Swanee River’ or ‘My Old Kentucky Old Home’ are very useful to stir up nostalgia for the old days among fellow professors. In addition, every performance combines solo and chorus singing, instrumental playing, and special guest performances. It is worth noting that this year, the club has already held two irregular performances on campus. The first performance was held at the 12th chancellor inauguration ceremony of Dr. Park Jae Kyu in February, and the second one was held in the central hallway of Changjogwan in May as a guerrilla concert for students. Needless to say, both of the performances earned a huge and hot response from the audience.
For more than ten years, the club has conducted its performance activities mainly on campus, but it has a solid plan to give charity performances at medical and social facilities, such as local hospitals and nursing homes, in the near future. Conventional wisdom holds that harder practice is directly proportionated to greater success. Following this wisdom, all the members of the club are practicing diligently, and they will do their best to keep on bringing better music performances to the university community and local residents.
