Just this week, Orlando director, arranger and vocalist Chris Keough is dominating two of Orlando’s major stages – Judson’s at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, singing with his vocal jazz quartet Resolve, and the Renaissance Theatre in the Ivanhoe district, where his Orlando Vocal Collective is performing this weekend. That doesn’t even include the internet, where a viral video of Orlando Vocal Collective harmonizing a cappella on a Beyonce song has garnered millions of hits in just the last two weeks.
All this, of course, is after the 29-year-old’s very recent return from Denver where his barbershop quartet Three and a Half Men celebrated their gold medal win as international barbershop champions and started planning their world tour. Keough said he’ll be performing in places like New Zealand, Japan and Italy.
The show this weekend is with his group Orlando Vocal Collective. It’s the last performance of “Cowboy Carter.”
“I'm already in the process of developing a new show and new concepts for everyone,” he said, noting that everyone in the dozen-or-so-member group gets at least one moment to shine during each show. “We're going to continue to try to take over social media after our latest viral moment, which was really crazy!”
Keough said the viral moment happened when he joined some fellow Beyonce fans from his Orlando Vocal Collective in traveling to Atlanta about two weeks ago for a Beyonce concert.
“On our way to the concert, we took a MARTA [Atlanta public transit] train ride, which is just what the locals do, and the entire train was full of people in cowboy hats so we were around like-minded people - everyone was heading to the concert. We started to sing [Beyonce’s] iconic anthem, American Requiem…and people pulled their phones out to listen to us sing and we got an applause on the train after but thought nothing of it. We just always sing!” Keough laughed.
“Days later,” he continued, “multiple POVs of this moment appeared on Tiktok and Facebook and Instagram. Literally, five different angles just showed up on everybody's For You page, and they began to get lots and lots of views. I mean, this video from multiple different angles has millions and millions of views in just two weeks, and it's been shared by some incredible platforms, including Essence magazine…Beyonce’s very own mother, Tina Knowles, shared it on her page! And then Beyonce’s production company also shared it on their page. The only video they've re-shared on Tiktok, ever in the history of their Tiktok page, is our video of this moment. So Beyonce knows who we are!”
Keough is everywhere these days, and he said he wants to bring the Orlando arts community along for the ride. “I really am just hoping to be a pioneer for my community coming up together, being bigger and brighter, and really putting us on the map as an iconic arts scene, because we definitely are.”
