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West Palm Beach

In October 1990 the Pink Singers became the first European LGBT+ choir to sing in the USA when 18 of us visited Florida. We had been invited by the 70 strong Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida to perform with them at a concert called “International Harmonies” in West Palm Beach. To celebrate our visit the Mayor of West Palm Beach named Friday October 26th 1990 “Pink Singers Day”.

The venue for the concert was a huge converted cinema and we were so good even the back row stopped what they were doing!  Our repertoire included “London Is London”, “Always On My Mind” and a medley of songs by George Gershwin. We also introduced the audience to Tom Robinson’s “Glad To Be Gay” with new lyrics for the occasion.

As well as doing the concert, we also did a special fundraiser in aid of the Health Crisis Network in Miami, who continue to support people with HIV and AIDs. At that time, the pandemic had impacted heavily on the local Hispanic community and their children, so we had a very mixed audience who cheered us on our way. The highlight of the event came as we sang the song “Somewhere Out There”, when a typically noisy Miami thunderstorm erupted outside. The song never sounded more impressive.

With the performances over, the Pinkies were also able to enjoy the many delights of South Florida (some pictured here, some not!). A few holiday romances took place and some lasting friendships were made. We were to meet up with the Florida chorus again two years later at the Festival of Gay and Lesbian Choruses in Denver.

Timeline datestamp: 10 October 1990

Loose Ends

On Saturday June 24th 1989 the Pink Singers appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme Ned Sherrin’s Loose Ends as part of a special show for LGBT London Pride Day. It was broadcast from the roof of BBC Broadcasting House and among the other guests were writer Julie Burchill, art critic Brian Sewell and magician Fay Presto. Here’s a transcript of the Pink Singers’ contribution to the recording.

Ned: Here we have the Pink Singers, a group of gay and lesbian choristers, who are going to send the music of Rogers and Hammestein into orbit, and to give a special send-off to international gay pride weekend.

Ned: You’ve already heard the Pink Singers this morning. They’re a much-travelled English gay and lesbian group, who’ve been singing for 6 years. They include teachers, computer people, civil servants, a banker and a biologist. Together they’ve sung for various charities – not all gay – they’re at the Green Room, Manchester next Saturday; the Tithe Hall Farm, Harrow the week after. And I think they’re going to start this little section by showing us how they sing Spread a Little Happiness.

Ned: You’ve got about 12 people here, you could do with more I suppose?

Sandy: We can always do with more men and women singers. But we would like some more lesbians to join us. Our three lesbian singers that were with us at the festival have left to go to New Zealand, round Europe and stay in Germany. So we are looking for more women.

Ned: Philip Rescorla, how much do you travel around the world? Where does it get you?

Philip: Well we’ve been to Stockholm. Last year we were at Berlin. Of course next week we’re at Manchester, so it’s Budleigh Salterton here we come!

Timeline datestamp: 24 June 1989

New MD – Michael Derrick

Michael, Assistant Accompanist

The next MD to take up the pink baton was Michael Derrick, who had been accompanist under Robert Hugill. Michael (born 1946) was a Mathematics lecturer and active in the scene as a member of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and a volunteer for the Gay & Lesbian Switchboard.

He did not seek out the choir; the choir found him:

One Saturday night in October 1986, I was drinking in my favourite pub. A complete stranger came up to me and introduced himself as Robert Hugill, the director of the Pink Singers. I had never heard of them. Robert was looking for an accompanist, and one of his drinking companions had pointed me out. He asked me to come to the rehearsal the next day – which I did.

Michael continued the structure that had been established by Robert Hugill and built on the work he had done.

[Robert had] turned them into a choir which gave regular concerts, rehearsed for concerts, had a standard repertoire, a rolling repertoire. He chose the repertoire, he wrote arrangement to suit the choir. And so every rehearsal was part of a build-up to a concert: a performance and then a new set of repertoire and so on. So I knew it was that sort of choir. And at every rehearsal there was the aim of putting on the next concert. So there was a very well defined set of objectives for each rehearsal. That was the choir that I joined and it’s more or less the structure that has survived to this day.

In 2013, Michael was asked about his contribution to the choir (he’s still a singing member today) and his response focused on the development of the membership:

Before I was the conductor it was a men-only choir. But when women came along to ask if they could join I always said yes, welcomed them, sat them down and gave them some music. And by the next week there was some specific things for them to do. I’d rewrite the arrangements to involve women. And then they brought friends and slowly the number of women increased. The first concert I conducted was the first concert the Pink Singers gave with women and men in the concert. Before that there were women and men together on the marches, but it was the first concert. And for every single concert since then there have been women and men in the choir. And that’s something I’m extremely proud of.

Michael Derrick went back to being the accompanist when Paul Cutts took over.

Timeline datestamp: 15 December 1988

Various Voices 1987-1989

Philip from the tenors takes us back to the early days of the LGBT choir festival that became Various Voices, with excerpts from former Pinkie Sandy Wilson.

When I joined the Pink Singers in April 1987 there were 20 members (all men) and we had songs like Tom Robinson’s “Glad to Be Gay” and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”. In 1988 two women from New Zealand joined and we finally started to become a proper lesbian and gay choir.

From the beginning the Pinkies forged close links with other European lesbian and gay choirs taking part in the third European Lesbian and Gay Festival of Song in Stockholm (May 1987), and the fourth in Berlin (July 1988).

We went off to Skokholm, which was the first time we went to a Festival of Song. […] There were only the Triviatas from Cologne, Noot Aam de Man from Amsterdam, the Stockholm Gay Mens’ Chorus, and the Pink Singers. The next year we went to Berlin – the Kongresshalle. Again there was about 12 or 13 of us and we did a 30 minute set there.

In 1988 the UK Government passed Section 28 of the Local Government Act which banned local authorities and schools from “promoting” homosexuality. The European choirs were horrified at this and said ‘Next year, the festival is going to be in London’. This was a big ask for a small choir like the Pinkies but with the help of the burgeoning LGBT community in London we were able to host the 5th European Festival of Song for three nights at the Hackney Empire with 14 choruses taking part.

It was at that time that we went from being a Gay Chorus to being a Lesbian and Gay chorus. We wanted to reach out because the Lesbian community and the Gay community in lots of ways were separated. […] By the time the festival happened, we were about 20 strong. So we were the first Lesbian and Gay Choir in Europe.

We called the festival ‘Singing the Blues Away’, which of course implied fighting the Conversative (‘blue’) government’s plans to silence the LGBT community. The festival ended with a big benefit concert for the Terrence Higgins Trust at Sadler’s Wells, where Michael Cashman first announced the formation of a gay lobbying group called Stonewall. My favourite memories of that night are the massed choir of 500 voices singing Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again and Gordon Kaye of TV’s “‘Allo ‘Allo” making his first public appearance after being outed by the Sunday newspapers.

The European Festival of Song was renamed Various Voices in 1995 and London hosted the event again in 2009 at the Southbank Centre when over 60 choirs from across Europe took part. Twenty years had passed and in that time the UK choral movement had grown enormously.

Timeline datestamp: 06 June 1987

Age of Consent

Mike Thorne produced the album ‘Age of Consent’, in which the Pink Singers backed Bronski Beat. This was the band’s debut album, written at a time when the age of consent for gay men was still 21 in the UK.

The first part of I Feel Love’s recording was in London, and this was where the cowboys rode into town, twenty of them in the collective posse of the Pink Singers.

This male voice choir with a difference embraced an extraordinary range of character types, from loudly extrovert to painfully shy. Appearance was just as varied. The group couldn’t resist giggling, non-maliciously, at this odd human assortment. The big sound of the resulting layers, the harmonies of which were recorded one at a time sounds quite Volga Boatmen, belying the hot summer night on which it was recorded in an East London basement studio, sounding considerably larger than the recording room.

It was hot singing, and hot conducting, leaving persistent memories of sweat on the synthesizer keys that I used to lay out the arrangement. An evening of this melts you, and the air conditioning just gives you up as a bad job. But at the end we had our sound. I broke out the champagne I had sneaked in. We might be an odd collection of differing misfits, and the juice didn’t go far among 25 people, but after all it was showbiz and ceremony is important.

The Pink Singers were even more effective on the other cover on the album, of the Gershwins’ It Ain’t Necessarily So. This is possibly the track which shows off the diverse talents of all concerned, starting with Arno (Uptown Horns) Hecht’s clarinet taking the melody at the beginning. Jimmy’s singing is effortlessly fluid, the more remarkable that he is delivering it on his first album. The harmonized scat sections are flawless, although we would admit that they took time.

You can feel the enthusiasm of the Singers. When they enter in the second verse they sound as if they have just been uncaged, which knocked the track nicely out of being comfortable middle-of-the-road anodyne. They were so anxious and anticipating that it was impossible for them to sing at any level less than raucous, even when humming under the a cappella verse.

Timeline datestamp: 15 October 1984