The Choir of Thammasat University raised the army of singers to sweep the gold medal in the 7th Vietnam International Competition.

Wednesday 12 April 2023

     The Thammasat University Chorus Club (TU Chorus) won the Golden Diploma award in the 7th Vietnam International Competition, held between 2 - 6 April 2023 in Hoi An, Socialist Republic of Vietnam. There were 18 international choirs of 7 nationalities from all over the world participating in the competition, consisting of Vietnam, Malaysia, Slovakia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, India and Thailand.

     The Thammasat team won the Golden Diploma award from 2 competition categories: A1 – Mixed Choirs, the choir competition with both male and female of Level 1 difficulty and Category F – Folklore, the folklore songs and/or indigenous folk songs by nationality of the choir team.

     Let’s hear from the representatives of the Thammasat University Chorus Club who raised an army of singers to win awards in Vietnam about what is behind the success.

     Nonwarit Rungariyathanaphong, the conductor and trainer of the choir said that the difficulty and the heart of the choir is unity and discipline. Even if we are good singers, having good voices, but if we lack harmony and good discipline to practice, we will never be successful in choir. The aspect of unity and alignment is important. It's very difficult for more than 30 people to come up with the idea and hit the song problem in the same direction, so the key for us is trust, believing in yourself, believing in our friends, and believing in our conductor. Another difficulty in choir singing is always imagining and creating the atmosphere of that song in your head in order for the singing to reach a certain mood and that the indispensable key is to listen to the other singers in the team because choir singing is a job that requires the cooperation of many people, not just an individual.

     Piyamon Pichaiyut, 3rd year student of the Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, the chairman of the Choral Assembly And the part soprano choir talks about the background of the rehearsal that “In rehearsals, we started with meetings, laying out the guidelines and the direction of the band, and began auditioning interested singers for the team and discuss with the university on how to support our dreams by which Thammasat University fully supports us, so thanks to the university for supporting the dreams of the juniors after recruiting members to join the team. Then, we started rehearsing as planned.

     When I received the problem from the competition, it was quite difficult to plan a training session at a certain level as the skills and techniques of the juniors were not at a competitive level at that time. In addition, the remaining time before going to the competition is only 6-7 months, but normally to go on a competition from zero, it takes a minimum of approximately 1 year for preparation. Therefore, the plan must be adjusted, adding more days to practice in order to keep up with the competition. The training period is planned out for each month with set goals for each training session. The singers had to prepare themselves for rehearsals and were responsible for their own notes to be as best as possible. In which the practice for the competition would be quite a very tough rehearsal.

     Piyamon expressed her feeling after receiving the award that “I'm very proud because we could see the whole process of this competition that we've all been through so much together to make it to this point. Thank you to all congregation members. Thank you to every department. Thank you to the staff of the Division of Student Affairs and big thanks to Thammasat University who supports us and make our dreams come true.