6 Minutes @ Metro Vocal Group

Metro Vocal Group, a renown American Acapella group singing and performing live in Chinese and other langagues who is now set foot in Hong Kong for their career. With their new Chinese album  <No Borders> soon to be launched, expected to be performing live and touring around Asia and beyond. mylifestylenews meet up with the group over a couple of The Nake Grouse Whisky in The Green Room on one fine afternoon to find out more singing in naked......

The collaboration with The Naked Grouse started from the brand image which uses the purest possible ingredients. Singing in acapella is the purest thing for voice. It is out there, it is pure and it is completely naked in voice performance. 

It takes 100 years of whisky making to create The Naked Grouse and it may also takes many years to discover some real good voices and group together in acapella singing in harmony, when this happen, it is simply a pure indulgence.

Acapella means "in the chapel" in Latin, there is no musical instruments in acapella music, although voices are often used to mimie the sounds of musical instrument. The style of music originated in churches and has since spread to other genres.

There are many different styles of acapella music. It can be produced by single voice or several voices singing in harmony. Acapella music is performed by church choirs, barbershop quartets, doo wop groups and some contemporary musicians. Acapella music is not about the particular genre of songs being sing. Instead it refer to the use of voices to produce the music without the accompaniment of musical instruments.

You don't need to have too many distortion, quality is the key ingredient when comes to singing, a pure human voice transcend less is more. This singing comes from the heart and soul and this is spirit how we translate and apply "Naked" in singing. But mind you, this is not what we meant singing naked in the shower, it is complete a different things.
 
We are originally hailing from the United States. We perform and embrace such genres as Pop, Doo-Wop, Classic Rock, Barbershop, R&B, Broadway and Jazz and now we decided to set based in Hong Kong and tour around Asia since we do performed in Chinese beside English and other languages.

Music is a universal language and with no border, since we started the acapella rendition of the Hong Kong band Beyond’s "Under a Vast Sky," 《海濶天空》, we received over 13 million views from the Internet and social media within Chinese communities around the world and that led us more confident in performing more Chinese pop songs and others genre especially from a Western face.

 

In fact, 95% of our audiences are very much Asian base. That shows that what we did and chosen this track was quite right. We are thankful for the fans support and with that, our coming first complete Chinese album "No Borders" is released. 

Our first album "Music for a Metropolis" in 2009 covered songs such as "Stand By Me" and Joey Yung’s "My Pride," echoing the similar popularity. This success was then overshadowed by the tremendous response.

With more than 14 years of being together as a group, it is like a fine marriage, it takes time to build the good relationship with each other and understand each other and complimenting each other from the lacking.

We really wish to have a duet or on stage performance one day with Beyond and Joey Yeung and also Eason Chan since we are performing one of their most well received songs. This is somewhat we wish to achieve at this point.

Singing in Karaoke is not really where we have our singing practice or rehearsal. Usually we group together and go to our studio to have our singing practices.

There will not be a new member coming in to the group as 4 makes a good team in our group, less is more and this is just perfect for now.

 

If we are not where we are at right now, we will be possibly doing voice training, coaching, teaching and perhaps having our own bar serving cosmopolitan and other cocktails.

 

Our ideal way of a living lifestyle varies from a couple of things, one of which is to appreciate the finest thing in life and enjoy at your age while we still can. Off to the beach while we can and live a simple life. 

 

                     Sean Oliver                                                  Kevin Thornton

 

                     Eric Monson                                                Michael Lance

mylifestylenews @ Metro Vocal Group

 Metro Vocal Group @ Under the Vast Sky 海闊天空

Metro Voca Group @ My Pride 我的驕傲

 

Metro Group @ Love is Suspected  愛是懷疑