The Social Network turned Belgian local heroes into an international success, now with a London concert and first UK album. Dorian Lynskey meets its creators, the Kolacny brothers
On 15 July last year, a movie trailer changed Steven and Stijn Kolacny's lives. Until that point their girls' choir, Scala, which specialised in performing songs by the likes of Nirvana and Depeche Mode, had been a strictly European concern, big in their native Belgium and neighbouring Germany but unknown in the US or UK. When David Fincher chose their decade-old version of Radiohead's Creep for the trailer of The Social Network, everything changed.
It was the perfect combination of film and song. Not only did the contrast between the communality of the performance and the prickly isolation of the lyric work as a metaphor for Facebook's creation myth; the dexterity of the trailer amplified the emotional potency of the music. Within hours of the trailer going online, Scala's website had registered 60,000 new US visitors. The brothers watched the page views mount as different time zones woke up and discovered the clip. By the end of the day, they had dozens of requests from concert promoters, advertising agencies, and women eager to join the choir. "There was a Canadian girl asking to join Scala and she was willing to move to Belgium for a year just to be in the choir," says Steven, a droll, shaggy 41-year-old.
"How motivated can you be?" marvels neat, shaven-headed Stijn, who is six years younger.
They are sitting backstage at the Union Chapel in London, a few hours before their debut London appearance to mark the release of their first UK album, an eponymous collection of new and old recordings. Their sudden international success is the latest symptom of a boom in enthusiasm for classic rock and pop songs reinterpreted by diverse groups of singers. The commercial powerhouse, of course, is Glee, with its let's-do-the-show-right-here pizzazz. The grassroots phenomenon is the PS22 Chorus, an amateur choir based in a Staten Island elementary school that has racked up more than 30m YouTube views, performed with Stevie Nicks and Katy Perry, and visited the White House. At the other end of the age scale, the Young@Heart Chorus, a Massachusetts choir of over-70s, were the subject of an acclaimed 2007 documentary. Scala's classically influenced approach is different again, spawning several imitators. "You have copycats now," says Steven. "Sometimes we meet a choir that uses exactly the same score. I don't like it." Stijn adds with pride: "You see how difficult it is. We have been doing this for years now. It's a cliche that it's fun to sing in a choir but boring to listen [to]. Scala is not boring."
The Kolacny brothers (the surname is Czech) grew up in the small Flanders town of Aarschot. Both played piano, as did their sister. "At a certain time, we had three grand pianos in the house," says Stijn. "Can you imagine?" Stijn, who conducts, was a classical music devotee who didn't get into pop until his early 20s. Steven, who writes the arrangements and Scala's original material, was the pop buff.
After studying music elsewhere, they returned home to form a choir. "You have to be really good to get out of Aarschot," says Steven. "You have to be a fighter," agrees Stijn. Formed in 1996, Scala performed a standard mix of classical material, musicals and pop standards for its first five years. "It was boring for me," says Steven. "In classical music everything is done already. The music is brilliant but if you play a piano concerto of Beethoven, that's already been done a million times by brilliant pianists. That was the big escape for me – to find something new."
The solution was the rock songs he loved and they unveiled their new direction in the final round of a choir competition in Canada in 2001. "Steven really wanted to end with I Think I'm Paranoid [by Garbage] and I said: 'Is that a good idea?'" remembers Stijn. "And he really wanted to do it. And we did it and we ended up last." "No," corrects Steven, smiling. "We got disqualified!"
"But," continues Stijn, "the audience was all young choir singers and they freaked out. Everyone wanted scores from us."
At the following year's Lowlands festival in Holland, they were booked on the main stage. "Korn was the headliner and we were coming in when Korn was setting up and they thought we were groupies," says Steven. "We said, 'No we're a band, actually.' I will never forget the reaction because we started with four people in the audience, which was scary, and by the third or fourth song, there were 14,000 people."
Like any hybrid of classical and rock traditions, Scala's project would flirt with kitsch if badly executed. "We had to work for years on that sound," says Stijn. They realised that the songs that worked were the ones dear to Steven's heart. They tend to avoid material from before the 80s because Steven wasn't old enough to forge an emotional connection with it at the time, and prefer alternative rock to the pop songs embraced by Glee. "Someone asked us to do Like a Virgin," says Steven. "That was a bad idea. I think when it's getting too commercial our audience is not believing it any more."
It is public knowledge that Radiohead like their version of Creep but Steven refuses out of principle to mention any other feedback from artists they have covered. "We are not asking for compliments," he says firmly. "We never ask the original band for any kind of reaction. That would be really cheap."
Does that stem from a background in classical music where most composers aren't alive to give feedback? He nods. "In classical music everybody plays just music. All classical music is cover versions. When I pick out a song there's nothing other than the song. There's no image. The band is not important any more. There's one thing left and that's the song."
Still based in Aarschot, Scala has approximately 200 members, ranging in age from 18 to 28, allowing the brothers to vary the lineup from show to show. While up to 40 will sing on a particular recording, only 22 flew to the Coachella festival in California in April, and only 15 are here for their London debut. They have tough, multi-part auditions twice a year, filtering hundreds of applicants. "It's not that easy to make a choir like Scala," says one longstanding member, Lokke Dieltiems. "A lot of choirs think: 'Oh, we can do it,' but it's not as special. The sound of Scala is unique, I think."
Scala's stagecraft is impressive. The choristers shift formation for each song, fanning out into the pews of the chapel for a hymnal take on Metallica's Nothing Else Matters. The arrangements are versatile, too: stark and eerie for When Doves Cry by Prince, warm and tender for Use Somebody by Kings of Leon, and enriched by electronic beats for the brothers' own material. They have the audience in the palm of their hand.
"I think people are overwhelmed by many voices," Steven says. "It's like a solo violin can be very beautiful but if you put me in front of a big orchestra it's much more impressive. The warmth of it comes over me. It's something human I think."
Scala & Kolacny Brothers is out now on Wall of Sound. Scala play the final day of the Latitude festival in Sussex, July 15-17. More information at scalachoir.com
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jul/14/scala-kolacny-brothers-the-social-network
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