New Delhi: Nearly 200 people walked into The Piano Man Jazz Club on a weekend expecting to watch a choir perform. Instead, they became the choir.
At the Irish Pop-Up Choir, a World Music Day experiment organised by the Delhi club in collaboration with the Embassy of Ireland, the premise was simple: gather strangers in a room, teach them a handful of songs in under an hour, and turn them into a functioning choir.
By the end of it, the seating crowd had turned into groups of four, which often harmonised together. Some voices soared; others wandered confidently off-key. However, nobody seemed to mind.
The crowd was a mix of ages, accents, and musical abilities. There were seasoned singers and people who had never sung in public before. There were Irish expats, curious first-timers, politicians and Bollywood actor Adil Hussain, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers.
Glasses of whiskey sat on tables. People took breaks, laughed at missed notes, then returned to sing with renewed enthusiasm.
The conductor was Nise Meruno, the Nagaland-born choir director whose energy seemed to power the room. He spent an hour teaching harmonies, rhythms, and vocal arrangements, which several participants quickly forgot during the performance. Meruno laughed it off.
“For me, this is first of its kind,” he later told ThePrint. “I’ve done a lot of choral workshops. But this one with a spontaneous crowd was unique.” For him, the chaos was part of the event.
The idea had originated months earlier through an unlikely friendship. Meruno met the Irish ambassador, Kevin Kelly, through the Delhi-based choir Capital City Minstrels. Kelly had signed up as a chorister where Meruno was conductor.
The challenge was considerable. Traditional choirs rehearse for weeks or months. Here, it was spontaneous. What emerged was less a performance than a collective act of trust.
The set list stitched together a medley from across generations of Irish music. There was The Cranberries’ “Dreams” (1992), Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares to You” (1984), “Take a Sexy Picture of Me”, a 2025 hit from CMAT, and a finale built around U2’s One (1992) with an Indian riff.
For Kelly, the cultural gamble reflected a larger diplomatic instinct—arts and culture always bring people together.
Music, he figured, was the most direct route. He himself sang a song.
“I think it was a bit of a gamble in such a hot summer to get people to come out on a Saturday afternoon and to sing together,” Kelly said. “Indians love a good party.”
Pallavi, one of the attendees, called the format “fantastic.”
“Everyone was expecting an Irish choir sitting down,” she said. “And then suddenly we’re like, hey—you are the choir.”
For others, the event became an unexpected reflection on the cultural connections between India and Ireland.
“What I really liked is that Ireland is Europe’s best-kept secret and there is so much in common. Who doesn’t like U2,” Udita, a Delhi resident, said.
Many were already imagining a sequel by the end of it.
“I can’t wait for the Irish Pop-Up Choir to pop up again,” Meruno said.
Not everyone left entirely satisfied, however. One audience member had a complaint—“We should have sung a little bit more of ‘Dreams’ by The Cranberries.”
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)