History Page

40 Years of Pride

This year London Pride celebrates everything 1970 because it’s 40 years since the formation of the Gay Liberation Front. The Stonewall Rebellion began in New York in June 1969 and just over a year later the GLF was born. According to the Pride London website “the GLF was a revolutionary group of radical queens, hippies, students and activists who brought LGBT rights out in to the open.” Pink Singer Philip remembers the first GLF march a year later, officially to protest the age of consent:

The march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square was on 28 August 1971. There were about 1,000 people and the whole thing was lead by a Nigerian drum band. A very tall guy from Sweden grabbed my arm and said ‘I march with you’ and didn’t let go until we reached the Square. I remember we sang Bachelor Boy and My Guy. I felt like a gay Cliff Richard. We were joined by lot of sweet men in drag who sang along. It was possibly the first ever gay men’s chorus! I’ve been singing on Pride marches ever since.

Philip has been marching and singing since the start and is a long serving member of the choir. We’re proud that the choir is made up of old and new members. Last year, on 3 July 2009, when the Pink Singers thrilled the crowd in Trafalgar Square once more, it was Kate’s first Pride:

The best bit of my first Pride was singing on the main stage in Trafalgar Square and seeing thousands of people who had turned up to enjoy the day, being proud of who they were, and everyone belting out the chorus to YMCA. That, and getting my first rainbow-coloured cowboy hat.

Performing in Trafalgar Square at Pride 2009

The first ever London Gay Pride Rally was held a year after the GLF march on the 1 July 1972 and about 2,000 people came. Times have changed: in 2009 London Pride attracted 1,000,000 visitors. However, many of the original GLF demands from 1970 have still not been met in this country and in many countries throughout the world. In summary, these demands are:

discrimination against gay people must end
gay people should be taught that their feelings are normal
sex education must be inclusive
homosexuality isn’t a problem or sickness
communication between gay people should be open and police harassment must stop
discrimination by employers must stop
the age of consent should be equal for all
gay people must be free to hold hands and kiss in public.

Many of the Pink Singers also took part in Malta Pride last year. Our collaboration with a church youth choir resulted in a performance where LGBT people and the Catholic Church joined together to call for equality. And surprise song Hallini brought the house down! The Pinkies’ support for the Pride march showed how much we believe in supporting gay rights internationally. Kate says:

Malta Pride was a much smaller affair than London and it reminded me of how lucky we are in London and the freedom that we have. It drove home how important pride marches are to creating awareness of gay rights. The bravery of the people openly marching in Malta was completely inspiring. But then again the big celebration of gayness at London Pride is no bad thing either!

And now here we are in 2010. The Pink Singers are once again in the Pride parade and also on stage in Trafalgar Square, singing ‘Does your mother know’. There was never a better double entendre to ABBA’s classic song!

Louise Tondeur (with Philip Rescorla and Kate Nicholls)

Timeline datestamp: 03 July 2010

The Big Pink Chill

‘In the Pink(ies)‘ is a blog on the life and times of a Pink Singer, known only as the ‘Pink Insider’. This is their account of our concert “The Big Pink Chill” in 2010.

Every concert is a special event, not only because we have been rehearsing for the twelve or so weeks prior to it, but because every single one is different. The Pinkies’ last concert – the Big Pink Chill – was no exception, but for me, there were a number of changes this time round which made this particular experience more memorable.

The most significant difference actually began a week or so before the concert itself when we had news that the tickets had sold out. I’m not sure of the ins and outs of it, but it looks like this was due to a combination of more tickets sold by members, combined with a trebling of the tickets we sold through the website. Now, usually we do, especially in the winter season, sell out, but to do so so far in advance certainly caused Simon W a bit of a headache and more than a few late, sleepless nights.

The Royal College of Music is fairly familiar to us now, given that this is our second time there, so there are fewer surprises in terms of the venue itself. Nevertheless, since this time we were performing with two other choirs, Purple Harmony and Sing Out Bristol, rather than by ourselves, it took significantly more organizational work to make sure everyone was in the right place at the right time.

None of this would have been possible without the volunteers like Kate D who kept Sing Out Bristol entertained and updated, but a great deal of credit goes to our UK Concerts director Ben P. I have no idea how he does it, but he manages to co-ordinate moving nearly 150 people in and around the theatre, set out instructions to the production crew, and act as the general lynch pin of the whole operation, while still keeping a calm exterior and still singing! The fact that, as a choir, we just have to concentrate on our own performance, and not worry about all the extraneous logistical issues is down in no small part to Ben’s hard work.

The Pink Singers are about singing, true, but the creation of the end product requires so much input from a huge number of people. It is salutary to observe that it is no longer just the people in the committee doing all the work; there is a whole phalanx of Pinkies helping out in other ways, from choreographing our moves, to making announcements, to performing solos, to arranging sectionals, to recording multimedia, to organizing social events. All of these things create a much richer experience for all the members. And all of these Pinkies are doing this as volunteers at that, so it is good that we now have a tradition of recognizing their efforts at the concert.

One of the big events this season has been our inclusion of religious music in our repertoire. To be correct we have, for a long time now, sung music with a sacred theme, but the songs have largely been in Latin or classical, or about Christmas. So if you really want to split hairs, this is the first time we have sung modern Christian songs which are not carols in English. Hopefully that just goes to show how arbitrary the classification is, but it would be remiss of me if I did not acknowledge that this caused some consternation in the choir. We are an LGBT choir, and many of our members have an uneasy and occasionally fractious relationship with the Christian faith. So it is with some pride that the choir still stuck together to perform these songs well, despite any individual reservations.

The result was, for me, the most significant event of the evening, which was when Purple Harmony joined us on stage to perform. They are a children’s choir from Surrey, and the choir in which Cass used to sing when she was a little one. To me their being on stage with us was a profound statement of how far our society has progressed in terms of inclusiveness and equality. In rehearsal, our joint song Rutter’s Look At The World sounded beautiful, but with children’s voices it was sublime. I had to stop myself from choking with tears during the song itself it was so transcendent. The performance defied all stereotypes of what an LGBT choir is, and I certainly hope that the more conservative elements will at least have had some of their prejudices questioned.

I also want to highlight our other guest choir, Sing Out Bristol. They are one of the newest LGBT choirs in the UK, being just over two years old, but already they have over 60 members, 40 of whom came to London. I met them for the first time at Various Voices back in May 2009. Speaking to some of their members, they face the same problems we do – deciding on a direction for the choir, managing a large group of people and dealing with the right balance between the needs of the individual and needs of the choir as a whole. There is so much to learn, from each other, and it is wonderful what we can give each other the platform to perform at and support each other in the way we do. I can see our relationship growing from here on in.

All of this is wonderfully virtuous, but the best part is that the Pinkies really know how to have fun, so after the concert it was on to a raucous karaoke at the Imperial College bar, followed the next day by an understandably more subdued post-concert brunch at the Ku Bar in Lisle Street. Time to put away the pink accessory for another season; see you at the end of February for Summer 2010!

You can read the original blog post here.

Timeline datestamp: 16 January 2010

Manchester Choral Competition

The choir comes second in the Manchester Amateur Choral Competition – the first event like this the Pink Singers entered, which saw 15 choirs from around the country meet and compete. The competition is not solely focused on the winning choir – simply the satisfaction of having sung to a high standard and the opportunity to experience and enjoy the diversity of performance from other amateur choirs. Our bass, Tom, gives his account here…

To paraphrase Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being a Pinkie: first there’s the rehearsal commitment, where you have to sing with your friends once a week for a few hours. Then there’s the requirement to learn and perform some spine-tingling pieces. And there’s occasional travel….

So when the rallying call went out for willing participants to enter a choral competition in Manchester and spend a weekend up north, of course I jumped at the chance. What better opportunity to see the Pinkie family, crush those post-concert blues, and turn the red rose pink in the process.

We set off on a cold Friday evening and after a lively train journey, gathered on Canal Street for a night out. Much silly dancing took place – the kind that only seems to exist on holiday.

Saturday was our rehearsal day. Time to have some lunch and get down to the business of polishing our competition performance. With everyone gathered in the cosy surroundings of the downstairs room at Via on Canal Street, we ran through our songs. A last chance to dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s.

And then came Sunday, competition day. The air was filled with excitement in the foyer at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM). Choirs from across the country were here to compete for the trophy, performing in the RNCM’s stunning, newly-refurbished Concert Hall, buoyed by some fantastic support from the audience. We were scheduled to be on last, so we were able to see a good few of the other choirs perform – and as their notes resonated around the room it was clear that the standard was very high.

All too soon it was our turn. We were ushered into the warm-up room. Deep breaths all round. It feels like a different kind of adrenaline kicks in for a competition performance. A brief run-through. More deep breaths. Queuing up outside the concert hall. Then, walking on stage.

We opened with Murray’s (our conductor) arrangement (remix) of Vieni Imeneo from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, followed by a rearrangement of Blackbird and finishing with I Wanna Dance With Somebody. As the last note of Whitney drifted up to the ceiling it was time to relax a little. We didn’t have long to wait before the results came in from the judges, and…

…were thrilled to come third! following some superb performances from the Edinburgh Police Choir and the winning choir, The Noteables.

The return journey seemed to pass by in a haze, with a collective sing-along through the entire Pinkies’ back catalogue. The acoustics of a Virgin Pendolino aren’t quite as glorious as the RNCM Concert Hall but we gave it a go anyway.

And so with Manchester my last cherry was popped – my “competition cherry” (in the Pinkies there seems to be a cherry for everything).

The last four months have been hard work. But, as I write this blog, watching a video of our competition performance has made me realise why I joined. It’s when people get together that great things happen. This season has been an absolute blast. Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away from the next one.

Timeline datestamp: 21 November 2009

Malta

The collaboration between a British gay and lesbian choir and a Maltese Christian choir was always going to raise eyebrows, especially if they met in Malta, where Catholicism holds sway and the Gay Rights Movement is almost non-existent. In July 2009, however, the Pink Singers managed just that, taking their show to Malta to promote social equality through their music.

There were two immediate dilemmas; how would the fervently religious Maltese community react to a gay choir, and would it be possible to pair the Pinkies with another choir given these circumstances. “The gay scene in Malta is still quite backwards and limited”, Andrew says, “there are no gay choirs in Malta and they have no idea what a gay choir is…people were thinking it was going to be all feather boas and being camp”.

Under the leadership of Andrew Francalanza, a Maltese national, the Pinkies took the first small step towards a brighter future for Malta’s gay community, achieving the seemingly impossible for a minority without a voice. Andrew Francalanza became a Pinkie in 2007, and quickly learnt “how much fun it is to go abroad and sing with another choir”. In his capacity as International Concerts Co-ordinator, Andrew broached the idea of taking the choir to his native Malta.

At the Malta Gay Rights Movement’s suggestion, Andrew approached Symphonik, the choral branch of a Christian organisation that seeks to promote social equality through music and mirrors the Pinkies in intention and method. “It ended up growing from just a basic concert to being something really huge” Andrew recalls; “a gay and lesbian choir singing with a Christian choir underneath the Gay Rights Movement’s umbrella to promote equality”.

Eight months of frantic organisation later, the Pinkies headed to Valetta for a large scale concert in the City Theatre, with fifty choir members travelling to Malta’s capital for the event. Due to Andrew’s prior communication with the Maltese media and his own network of friends and contacts, the island was awaiting their arrival with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. As predicted, some called for the Church to take a stand against the choir’s promotion of homosexuality, but the majority of the community gave the Pinkies a warm welcome. “95% of feedback was really good” and the concert audience was very positive; “we blew them away!” Andrew says.

The joint concert was scheduled as the grand finale of Malta’s Pride week, which the majority of the Pinkies attended, having also sung at London’s Pride march two weeks previously. “London Pride and Malta Pride are two different concepts” Andrew explains. “London is in a place where it can celebrate being gay” with “a whole day and a big party in the streets where you can just have fun and be silly”. Malta Pride is “an hour…half an hour of marching, half an hour of speeches, and it was…quiet.” There was a feeling of silent anger amongst the marchers, whose banners displayed rage rather than celebration. “Even though it wasn’t said, [the silence] was a way of saying ‘we don’t have a voice’” Andrew says.

The Pride march had a great emotional impact on the Pinkies, with their Chair, Mark Winter, describing the scene as “London twenty years ago”. Their presence changed the atmosphere completely, bringing joy and fun to the event and doubling the number of marchers to almost a hundred. The Pinkies showed the Maltese gay community the way Pride should be; full of fun and, most importantly, pride in who you are. Their positive attitude, alongside their banners and rainbow flags, had an instant impact. The Maltese EU parliamentary representative stood up and professed his ignorance regarding the gay rights movement and his desire to work with the community towards a greater acceptance and social freedom.

Amazingly, the Maltese Prime Minister followed his lead and has now established a lobby group to promote gay rights on the island. Further to this, the Malta Gay Rights Movement has set the wheels in motion for the formation of a gay choir, an amazing development considering the current social ramifications of being openly homosexual in Malta.

The concert and Pride march were both an astounding success and provided the Pink Singers with a moving experience as well as new friends from Symphonik, who joined them at Malta’s only gay bar for the concert after party. The trip’s success demonstrates the impact small actions and a positive attitude can have. “For the choir the [trip] was a really powerful experience…it wasn’t just us singing and having fun, it was such a big political message” Andrew says, “they keep asking me when we’re going back.”

Alex Field, guest writer

Timeline datestamp: 13 July 2009

Various Voices 2009 – London sings out!

London’s South Bank Centre goes gay for the Various Voices festival (formerly known as the European Lesbian and Gay Festival of Song); the Pink Singers are one of the festival’s three stakeholder choirs.

It is so hard to describe what Various Voices is to someone who has never been to one. Once every four years, the LGBT choirs of Europe gather to sing to and show each other how far they have come. On the face of it, this is like any other choral festival, but the gays really do have all the fun, and VV is like a massive family reunion with two thousand relatives you actually like.

The journey to VVL has been a long one, and we knew we had a lot to live up to. VV 2005, my first, was expertly put together in Paris by our friends the zany Equivox and the slick Melo’men. At the end of it London and Geneva put bids in to Legato to host the next one, but the award only came a year later. It was then that Team London, the group comprising members from the Pink Singers, Diversity and the London Gay Men’s Chorus, started the wheels in motion. We’ve been meeting pretty much every first Tuesday of the month since, but much more frequently in the last year, and it was wonderful to see members of all the London choirs putting their time and effort in under the guidance of the Festival Director Martin Brophy.

The biggest coup was securing the world-famous Southbank Centre for the four days of the festival. We needed a venue where people could sing and socialize in one space, and there is nowhere so perfect. But that was just half the battle, there was a programme to plan, a registration process to set up and a million other logistical nightmares to sort out. But before I could even blink the information desk in the Clore ballroom went up and the delegates started arriving! It was time to just cross our fingers and pray that all the preparation would see us through.

Of course preparation for the Pinkies’ choral performance was also on my mind. The Pink Singers sent a large cohort of delegates and we were in the opening concert Voices Of Our City on the Friday night. It is always more nerve-wracking singing to other choristers, but we have been tweaking our repertoire since the start of the year and were ready. Besides, you could not have had a more positive audience. In particular Somewhere and Teardrop were spine-tinglingly lush, and our set was greeted with thunderous applause and a standing ovation. In fact, the standing ovation was a regular feature of all the choir performances. VV is not about acknowledging the musical prowess of the established choirs, it is about supporting the smaller, fledgling choirs. We all understand the power of song to move, celebrate and overcome prejudice, and it is choirs like Sing Out Bristol, making their debut at a VV, but especially the women of Le Zbor from Croatia, who put up the most inspiring of shows.

Knowing that the three choirs of London have such differing musical styles, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by the variety of performances on display. From Der Homophone’s theatrical tale of Cleopatra, to the Vancouver Men’s Chorus’ tightly harmonized Celine Dion, to Rainbow Chorus’ narrative of protest songs, to Canta:re’s exploration of Robert Schumann’s music, there literally was something for everyone. And the music didn’t just stay in the theatres either, it was on the cabaret stages, it was at the bar, it was in the fountain, it was on the riverside. We sang about stopping homophobia, we sang to Remember Justin, but we sang mainly because we love to.

Like Lou T, I aimed to install myself in the Clore Ballroom for the morning vocal warm-ups, followed by the free performances. I caught the musical director of Rozenkoor taking off his shirt as a part of Steam Heat, I saw the girls of Die Rheintoechter doing their sexy, sinuous choreography. I watched our own Tanya and Cilla do their beautiful rendition of Indigo Girls. It was just so much fun!

Two events really stood out to me over the weekend. The first was the Big Gay Sing: imagine 900 gay men and women who can all hold a note, totally up for performing gay anthems, led by a choir made up of members from all the different choirs. I was sitting next to Oliver from Die Mainsirenen and he couldn’t stop singing, even in the parts where we were supposed to listen to the soloists. Our own Thomas performed a jaw-droppingly inspiring rendition of Over the Rainbow with a friend from Diversity, to a truly deserved standing ovation from the audience.

The second event was With One Voice, the performance of the from-scratch festival choir. I sat between Nicholas from the LGMC and Franck from Podium Paris, or “Tatjana” and “Susan” if you went by the names printed on our seat backs! I doubt anyone could have told me just how awe-inspiring it was to be part of a 400 voice chorus performing Carmina Burana in a huge auditorium like the Royal Festival Hall. And we did it all with just 48 hours of rehearsal.

At the end of the day everyone had their own experience of Various Voices. The one moment which encapsulated it for me was when some of the Pinkies, together with Henning from Vox Homana, were in Pizza Express after the closing ceremony, having dinner, feeling a little tired and a little sad that things had come to an end. The women of Gemengd Dameskoor were at an adjacent table. Seeing us they started singing their songs to us in the middle of the restaurant, and we sang our songs back to them, to applause from diners and staff. It is memories like this which make my world a little brighter.

Various Voices is a very special treasure; it has been an honour to be a part of Various Voices London 2009. Roll on VV2013!

Timeline datestamp: 01 May 2009

Share

Copy short link