by KYW's Lauren Lipton
Maybe you've seen them performing around town or elsewhere. Philadelphia now joins cities around the world in having its own complaints choir.
(Schwalm:) "We get all kinds of complaints, so we have to boil them down."
Andrew Schwalm handles marketing for First Person Arts, dedicated to transforming the drama of real life into art.
Evan Solot is the composer who puts the complaints to music:
(Solot:) "They put complaint collectors out on the street with little t-shirts that say 'complaint collector,' and they started collecting complaints from people."
(Stein:) "Complaints about dog poop."
Choir member Jonathan Stein was learning the lines.
(Stein:) "D-O-G. P-O-O-P."
(Solot:) "The Complaint Choir began in Helsinki, Finland. They gathered a bunch of complaints, and the complaints became the lyrics for a choral piece that they performed.
"Their choir, of course, was singing in Finnish with subtitles, and they were saying things like, 'Who leaves dirty towels in the sauna?'
"Since then, there have been complaints choirs everywhere -- for example, there's a Budapest complaint choir."
The Philadelphia Complaint Choir (shown in rehearsal above) will do its final performance this Wednesday at the Painted Bride Arts Center, part of the First Person Festival. For more information, go to complaints.firstpersonarts.org.
And that's Positively Philadelphia!
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