Early in 2025, me and Katya decided to ask two friends of ours, Chichi 李駿琪 and Felix 游博能 if they are interested and singing together with us. They agreed, and on 17 January 2025, we made a LINE group named “Sing4Fun” as our main goal is to have fun. We later made an instagram account, thinking we probably want to be a little bit more serious, and later changed our group name to Tala Vocal Ensemble.
We recorded some videos of us singing some classical choral pieces. Later on, I got a crazy idea to join a competition, and thinking we might need to recruit another bass. I asked Felix if there’s a chance Ken 許啟群, a friend of ours (me and Katya met him in APYC 2019 while he and Felix already known each other for a long time), and he said we can try. Alas, Ken agreed! Now a group of five, we found some songs, rehearsed for several times, and then send our recordings to the committee of the 19th Fukushima Vocal Ensemble Competition 2026 as a part of preliminary registration process. With nothing to lose, we were really surprised that we got accepted! Long story short, on March 2026, we finally really made it to Fukushima as the only overseas group!
Fukushima was our very first stage, our very first competition. We were so honored to be awarded with:
- Gold Diploma
- One of the Finalists for the Grand Championship
- Special jury award: Avip Priatna Award
A bunch of happiness and love, a wonderful beginning, and hopefully a long-lasting friendship. Thank you for giving me the chance to sing with you all on our very first stage, our very first competition; and thank you, dear friends, for premiering my work at the Grand Championship! Also I am so happy to meet old and new friends, Masae and EnsembleM Nagano! Thank you so much for being such a wonderful and supportive friend.
Thank you Kak Avip for your tremendous support and your profound belief in our music. Your words have touched us deeply and inspired us to keep growing not only to become better musicians, but, as you so beautifully reminded us, to become better human beings.
Thank you Kentaro Sato for writing such a beautiful song, 「前へ」 Mae-e, so that people like us may share its beautiful message with everyone. We are so honoured to have been able to sing this on the stage of Fukushima, and it truly moved me, I had to hold back my tears the whole time we were singing. I knew the song was written to commemorate the earthquake disaster in Japan in 2011, but only after we finished singing did I realise that it was also the very same disaster that struck Fukushima which made the song even more meaningful. Now it has a special place in my heart.
Looking forward to many more songs to sing with Tala!
希望我們可以一起唱歌，每天無論開心還是難過，還是能夠一步一步往前走。
Anyway, we’re ‘upgrading’ to a group of six now! Very happy to have my best friend, Danivu 莊小以 joining us for our future performances. Yeay! Danivu is a wonderful musician I know from Taipei Chamber Singers, and I believe her presence in Tala will help us to grow even better.
