Brighton Gay Men’s Chorus reach record numbers

With their reputation growing, they will be playing the Secret Garden Party in beautiful countryside near Huntingdon, East Anglia (July 20-23, performing on the Sunday 13:00-13:45).

The choir was created in January 2005 when a small group of friends who loved singing were disappointed at the lack of a non-scene space in which to socialise. Through regular weekly performances, they created a space where people could celebrate music, enjoy the fellowship of other like-minded people and contribute to the local community.

George Holroyd joined the choir two years ago this August and is loving it: “I had just moved to Brighton from New York and I had been wanting to join a gay men's choir for a long time. I took the plunge after Covid. The singing bit is important but there is also the social side. We have what we call the three S’s in the chorus – singing, support and social. The support and social sides are really important too. As a single gay man it's a good way to meet people and to find your own people. I lived in New York and I lived in San Francisco and they are both renowned for rejoicing in the gay community and this is an amazing way of doing that. The singing part is amazing but there's also real friendship there. There are 100 members which is our highest ever and there is a lot of activity. We do three main shows a year which are great fun and really enjoyable to do and we do other things as well. We went to Barcelona in September and we sang with the Barcelona gay men's chorus in the biggest square in Barcelona for the biggest festival in Barcelona. It was just an incredible experience.

“The singing for me is just really for pleasure. I'm not an amazing singer but I do think I'm getting better! All our arrangements are done by our music team. We aim to do about 18 songs for each show. We do Fringe and Pride and Christmas and then other shows that come up in between. We've done quite a lot of private events as well. We were invited to sing at a conference of psychologists in Brighton so naturally we sang Madness!

“But for our three main events, we do 18 songs in each, of which six are brand new, six that we carry forward from the previous concert and then six from our huge back catalogue which is about 260 songs. We do obviously a lot of the gay anthems like Kylie and Cher and Madonna and Spice Girls and we also do some Kate Bush but we are also quite adventurous. We do a huge range of things.”

It all amounts to a fantastic comeback post pandemic: “They really struggled during the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic. It was hard for the first few shows because people were scared about buying tickets because the show might be cancelled or there might be an outbreak and our funds were depleted but we started getting our funds back; we've now got our highest membership; we have never reached this level before. We have got a good reputation for what we do and, as I say, the social and support side are also so important, and the great thing is that we tend to get invited back.”

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