It was in November last year, while pursuing a story about a flash choir that was to be held in a park in Mumbai, that we found ourselves at Haiku JAM, a cultural space in Bandra. That's where we'd met Tristan Knelange for the first time. The Dutch conductor, settled in the city for the past two years, was setting the space up for all the choir members scheduled to show up for rehearsals. We, however, were there to talk to Anca Florescu Abraham and Tina Nandi Stephens, the two people behind Love Your Parks Mumbai (LYPM), under whose aegis the flash mob was to be held. But during the course of our conversation, we also noticed how the room became filled with people of different ages and from diverse backgrounds, who Knelange had assembled to play music together.

That flash choir was an eventual success, with over 100 people witnessing the first performance at Patwardhan Park in the suburb, and a similar number turning up for a subsequent one. And that set Knelange thinking. Why bring something good to a grinding halt just because two initial events are over? So, when he had a chance to perform at Ketevan Sacred Music Festival in Goa in February this year — and was asked to return for the 2020 edition with his own choir — Knelange had an idea. He told himself, "Let's revive the LYPM outfit and make it a more chiseled product." And that's how Kokomo, Mumbai's newest choir, which will play its inaugural concert this week, came to be formed.