Our History
When Raymond Wells and his partner moved to Bristol in 2007 they were surprised to find that the city didn't have a gay and lesbian choir. So Raymond set up Bristol Gay Chorus in September of that year, advertising for people to get involved on internet forums and in Venue magazine.
The very first meeting attracted about six people to his house in Bradley Stoke. We met weekly and our numbers quickly outgrew the homely space. Raymond found us a more central venue in St Werburgh's Community Centre kitchen, which we hoped would attract more members. We sang around an electric keyboard, trying to ignore the noisy boiler and the smell of chip fat!
Growth was slow and we had yet to find a musical director. Raymond was at the helm, conducting as best he could while also sourcing scores, managing publicity and venue hire, and shouldering financial costs when we fell short. It was too much for one person to handle and unfortunately Raymond moved on in early 2008.
We were still a small group, but the few of us who had joined were reluctant to lose the first LGBT choir that had been formed in Bristol for around 10 years. So a handful of us took over, sharing the workload and planning to rebuild the choir up slowly (these early leading members were Rónán de Búrca, Hannah Latham, Rowena Killick, Lesley Welch, Nick Stephenson and Nick Gill).
We went back to singing in our living rooms, taking it in turns to lead, and gradually we grew big enough once more to move into a rented venue, charging a small weekly subscription to cover the costs. We renamed ourselves to Sing Out Bristol, formed a committee, wrote a constitution, and had joint musical direction for a while from Rónán de Búrca and Nick Stephenson. We then appointed Max Wellingham as our MD with Rónán as accompanist.
Singing membership had grown bigger and a couple of members were experienced professionally at applying for grant funding. With the support of Mark Hubbard we pulled together two grant applications and we were awarded funding from both the Quartet Foundation and Awards for All!
This helped solidify and propel our growth as we were able to buy equipment, attend events and workshops, train members and bring in musical professionals to help the choir develop their singing skills.
Our first major public performance at St Paul's Church in April 2009 was to an audience of over 200 friends and family.
We then sang at the Various Voices International Festival at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London in May 2009 and have since sung at Pride events, wedding ceremonies and private parties, been the guest choir for The Pink Singers at the Royal College of Music in London and put on our own concerts complete with costumes and slick choreography to audiences of 400 plus. Rónán de Búrca has now been our talented musical director since late 2009 and Miranda Garland our skilled accompanist.
