On Saturday 13th July, when you come along to Hand in Hand – our 30th anniversary festival, you won’t just be watching us Pinkies! We’ll be joined by a whole host of other LGBT choirs from around the country. Not got your ticket yet? Buy yours now! From Kent we head north all the way to Yorkshire, and the Deep C Divas!
All about the Deep C Divas
Deep C Divas on stage
The Deep C Divas are a lesbian choir based in Leeds, Yorkshire. They formed in January 1999 after two of its members had attended the 1998 Amsterdam Gay Games and seen choirs performing in the cultural festival there. Inspired by what they saw, they formed a choir and quickly went from strength to strength. Four years later they attended the Sydney Gay Games VI and took part in a brilliant choral SingOut program, the highlight of which was singing at the Sydney Opera house. Their repertoire is varied and includes songs originally made famous by Dusty Springfield, KD Lang, the Beatles, Karine Polwart, Holly Near and Chaka Khan.
On Saturday 13th July, when you come along to Hand in Hand – our 30th anniversary festival, you won’t just be watching us Pinkies! We’ll be joined by a whole host of other LGBT choirs from around the country. Not got your ticket yet? Buy yours now! From Sussex we scoot over to Kent, and the small but perfectly formed Nine Bob Notes!
All about the Nine Bob Notes
Nine Bob Notes
The Nine Bob Notes are a new lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex choir and had their first performances in 2012. All LGBTI people living, working, studying or socialising in Kent are welcome. They meet fortnightly on Tuesday evenings in Canterbury, and are performing right up-to-the-minute repertoire including Adele, Lady Gaga, among some more traditional pieces.
On Saturday 13th July, when you come along to Hand in Hand – our 30th anniversary festival, you won’t just be watching us Pinkies! We’ll be joined by a whole host of other LGBT choirs from around the country. Over the next week or so we’ll be posting a series of spotlights on each of the choirs you’ll be able to come along and see performing. Not got your ticket yet? Buy yours now! They’re going fast! First on our tour of the LGBT choirs from around the nation, it’s those lovely chaps from the seaside, the Brighton Gay Men’s Chorus!
Is it too big? Can we fill it? It was with much excitement that a gaggle of us Pinkies converged on the Troxy near Limehouse last Sunday to get the answers to these questions. The Troxy is a new venue for the Pink Singers in that we’ve never performed there before, but we really needed a larger venue for the Hand In Hand concert we are putting on on 13 July. In fact, the title “concert” is itself a bit of a misnomer as what were are actually organizing is a whole day of vocal workshops, followed by a concert in the evening featuring not just us, but LGBT choirs from across the UK, and our signature aftershow party, this time on a scale like we’d never done before. So, a real smorgasbord of activities for the audience to choose from then! Continue reading “Hand in Hand: sound-checking at the Troxy”
Plan your visit now to Singing The Changes, our free exhibition about LGBT history in the UK spanning the last thirty years! The exhibition opened last Thursday night to a selection of guests who’d helped the exhibition come into existence (an army of volunteers over 50 strong, plus our academic advisers and the extended Pink Singers family). As part of this project, as well as a ton of factual and image research as mentioned by Hester, the choir has recorded over 16 hours of video footage collected from oral history interviews with choir members past and present.
Jess and Karin
The clips from these personal histories really bring this rich and fast-moving history to life; from stories of secretive liaisons and active persecution back in the 70s and 80s; right through to coming out to close family members over email in more recent years. London’s vibrant cultural mix, reflected in the choir, becomes evident as our video histories take us all over the world, from Singapore to Nottingham, from South Africa to South Wales, from Trinidad to Tooting. Personally, over the last few months I’ve been responsible for co-ordinating the filming, transcribing and editing of these oral histories along with a small army of around 25 volunteers from the choir. I have genuinely laughed and cried (sometimes both at once) whilst watching the stories of those involved. It’s been a very humbling experience. I’m the same age as the choir itself, and my big take-out from the exhibition and the tales of individuals is just how dramatically the landscape of LGBT community has shifted in just a couple of generations, and how different my experiences have been compared to my peers who are just a few years older/younger. You can see a sneak preview of the exhibition below.
Plan your visit now
14 June – 12 July 2013 Thursday & Friday evenings 6–9pm Saturday & Sunday 10am–6pm Audit House, 58 Victoria Embankment Tube: Temple / Blackfriars 15 July – 18 August 2013 Daily 10am-6pm The Guardian, King’s Place Tube: King’s Cross Free admission
