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Choir exchanges can be mutually beneficial and culturally enriching as both choirs perform together, socialize, and explore each other’s home turf. dIE TAKTLOSEN have had their fair share of choir exchanges, yet none of them come close to our friendship with Voces Gaudii. In early 2018, as we rehearsed our new repertoire for Various Voices in Munich that May, we heard from an LGBT choir based in Warsaw who had started a crowdfunding project to allow them to travel to and perform at the festival. Our reaction was one of great admiration for an LGBT choir that dared to even exist, let alone perform, in Poland. We were also aware of the strain that traveling to Dublin for Various Voices in 2014 had put on our own pockets. We responded with as generous a donation as we could afford. E-mails back and forth expressed gratitude and we pledged to keep in touch and attend each other’s concerts at the festival. On a hot and breezy mid-May day in the center of Munich, a group of us went to hear Voces Gaudii perform at one of the outdoor soundstages. They were young, energetic and had a refreshingly positive vibe. Their repertoire appeared to cover everything from the Italian Renaissance and traditional Polish folksongs to Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars. The stage’s sound system struggled to drown out the extraneous noise, but we were hooked. dIE TAKTLOSEN had performed at the Gasteig on Saturday and had partied that night. Voces Gaudii, however, was one of the last choirs to perform, with a slot on Sunday morning. We piled into the small theatre, some of us with hangovers from the night before, some of us with luggage ready to hightail it out for a journey home, but all of us eager to hear more singing from this intriguing group of people. Nothing could have prepared us for what happened next. In the course of however many minutes, Voces Gaudii sang, their warmth and positive vibe, their well-rounded sound, and their inspired choice of repertoire really captivated their audience. But it was their final encore number that was the most moving: We Shall Overcome, a very fitting close to a concert by a Polish LGBT choir that shows such unswerving courage in the face of adversity. At Various Voices, we had reached out to several choirs with the idea of putting on a joint pre-Christmas concert. As time went on, however, it became clear that a joint concert with Voces Gaudii would be the most viable option. And so it was that the cooperation between our two choirs was born. We were very honored to welcome Voces Gaudii to Cologne for a fun-packed weekend in early December 2018 which included a meet and greet on Friday, an afternoon and an evening concert on Saturday followed by a party well into the early hours, and a brunch on Sunday. For those who weren’t completely exhausted by Sunday afternoon, there was even a sightseeing tour of Cologne. The common language of the proceedings was, of course, English. Music is also a language, however, and anyone who has ever sung or played in a music group will know the fulfilling connection that comes from communicating with others through music. It was through this connection that both choirs came closer. Many reported that their most treasured memory of the weekend was the local Kölsch song ‘Unser Stammbaum’ which both choirs sang together, with Voces Gaudii singing in Kölsch dialect and dIE TAKTLOSEN singing in Polish. Given the history of relations between Germany and Poland, this joint performance was an especially moving experience for many in the audience, most of whom were German. What, on Friday, had begun as a cooperation between our choirs was, by the Sunday, becoming a friendship. Fast forward to early December 2019 and it was in the spirit of friendship that Voces Gaudii extended a very warm welcome to dIE TAKTLOSEN in Warsaw. Voces Gaudii had also planned a fun-packed weekend with cultural highlights including an evening at Ramona, Warsaw’s oldest gay bar, karaoke in one of Warsaw’s gay/mixed nightspots, a delicious lunch in a typical Polish bar mleczny, and a guided tour of LGBT Warsaw. The latter was remarkable in that it brought home to a choir from a city with one of the biggest Gay Pride events in Germany, just how invisible LGBT people are in Polish society and how their lives and achievements are either straight washed or simply absent from the history books. It was this invisibility that both choirs wanted to counter with their concert of pieces from their current repertoires. This year’s big cultural crossover collaboration was the cheerful Polish Christmas song, Z kopyta kulig rwie, which could be termed the Polish equivalent of Jingle Bells. dIE TAKTLOSEN had spent several weeks getting their tongues around the piece’s challenging consonant clusters and their hard work met with a resoundingly positive reaction from the audience. For two and a half hours, both choirs were very visible. A couple of days after the concert, Voces Gaudii reported that it had brought genuine hope to some members of the audience. One of those was a 14-year-old Roma boy who is growing up gay in Warsaw and, as anyone might imagine, has not had the best childhood. He watched the entire concert in stunned silence because he had never seen so many LGBT people who were so happy, beautiful and strong. On the way home, he told his mother that he had no idea gay people lived so long. “So, maybe I will too.” Our friendship will continue. Watch this space. Text by Richard Patrick from Cologne. Pictures by Mikołaj Stefański.

Hi! It's us, the Krakofonia LGBTQ+ choir. Here you'll find the crowdfunding link: https://zrzutka.pl/4y9m2s To those of you who already know us- thank you for being with us! And to those as yet unfamiliar: come in and welcome. Who are we? Krakofonia is one of Poland's two LGBTQ+ choirs, based in Krakow. We have been singing with pride since 2014 and growing strong. Our key rule is that EVERYBODY HAS A VOICE. We believe that each and every person is an invaluable part of our community, and so is their voice. In our 5 years of activity, we have sung for audiences in Gdansk, Warsaw, Katowice, Frankfurt am Main, Munich and, of course, our home city of Krakow - including a performance at TEDex Kazimierz. And now, we would like to celebrate our fifth anniversary and invite you to join! We would like to do an anniversary concert, with a brand new repertoire, a selection of LGBTQ hits of the last five decades - get ready for a real musical feast! Our singing will be accompanied by a burlesque show by our brilliantly talented artist friend, Lola Noir. In short - a mini Queerovision. Vikerlased - main purpose We want to invite our rainbow friends from Estonia for a joint performance - choir LGBT+ Vikerlased, which means rainbow Vikings. Unfortunately, the distance between our countries is pretty large, and so are ticket prices, that we'd love to be able to help them cover. It's our main purpose of crowdfunding and we will spend half of our gathered money on it. Few words about our friends from Estonia Vikerlased was founded in 2017 as a first LGBT+ choir in Estonia and the Baltic states. Vikerlased has been created for the LGBT+ community in Estonia, it’s friends, families, supporters and otherwise friendly people. The aim of this choir is to give voice to the LGBT+ community in a positive and empowering way – through choral singing. The repertoire of Vikerlased includes Estonian choral classics as well as newer and more colorful hits from abroad. In 2019 Vikerlased made history by taking part in the traditional Estonian Song Celebration as a first LGBT+ choir. The concert in Krakow would be their first concert further away from our neighboring countries. What do we need the rest of the cash for, you ask? to pay for a professional photoshoot of the performance to pay for the concert venue with decent acoustics and decent seats to prepare costumes that will do justice to each decade of queer music to print posters that will advertise the show in Cracow to pay rent for a new rehearsal venue - we now have over 50 people! to decorate the concert venue with due rainbows and bling These are just the most urgent of our needs. Please consider supporting us and do have a look at the perks we provide in return! If possible, please share this post with your friends. Be the one to help bring about Cracow's very first Queerovision!

LEGATO is proud to announce the launch of our new website which coincides with our expanding role as the European Association of LGBTQ+ Choirs and with our 22nd Anniversary. Today, after twenty-two years, we’re releasing an updated brand identity, which includes a new logo, colors, and font. You’ll see the new look anywhere we’re out in public, like our website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We believe the new look better matches what we’ve become since 1997. Our Association has grown and evolved over the years, and we felt it was time for a change. We have refreshed our logo to reflect who we are today and to symbolize our future. Our new website provides a clear message of who we are, what we stand for and where our value lies when promoting art and culture, particularly promoting choral singing while strengthening communication and cooperation between the LGBTQ+ choirs in Europe. The website also boasts a clean design and intuitive and consistent site-wide navigation system with improved menu functionality that directs you to the information most relevant to you. It is also fully responsive to mobile devices, making it easy to navigate on a wide range of web browsers and portable devices. We’ve introduced a range of new content to the Choirs Section, including all your social networks, offering you the option to easily update this information, and keep all the choirs up-to-date with your information. It is now easier in our Calendar of Events to announce your concerts and festivals, you can upload the information, and our Communications team will add it to our calendar more quickly. Our Various Voices Festival section will grow more and more since we are now trying to connect all the memories of the festivals in one place. Our News has received a much-needed facelift enabling you to sign up for monthly updates right on the homepage, and access the articles that matter to you through smart topic filters. In addition, our Resources section is a host to a library of guides, designed to help you make the right decisions about LGBTQ+ related aspects, how to handle your own social networks, and many more interesting ideas. The Links section will include options to some sites of interest to choral musicians and choir leaders. Going forward, we will continue to communicate regularly through our blog and provide new articles and notifications. We also plan to continue adding more content to provide you with all of the information you need. Please feel free to recommend any options which you think would be relevant to other visitors, and we'll be very happy to include them. We’re really proud of the new website and feel it will create the experience you’re looking for when you pay us a visit. Check out our new website here: www.legato-choirs.com

SAVE THE DATE! June 15th - 19th 2022 #ISingWhatIAm Various Voices 2022 Hosted by Komos Coro Gay Di Bologna #vv2022 #legatochoirs #festival

The main aim of Legato is to take care about the continuation of the Various Voices Festivals every four years. For the Festival in 2022 Legato has sent out in Oct. 2016 the Call for bids. The board is happy to announce that there are now three choirs in competition to be the host of the 15th Various Voices Festival. Please discuss these bids with your choir in preparation for the final voting at the Legato annual general meeting 2018. The delegates of the Legato member choirs are invited to take part at the presentation and voting at the annual general meeting in Munich at Saturday, 12. May 2018, 9-12h. In case your choir is not attending the Festival you are allowed to vote online. Please refer for the separate e-mail from us with details about the voting process and the voting code. Team Bologna / Komos Coro Gay di Bologna Bid Document Team Mallorca / Mallorca Gay Men's Chorus Bid Document Team Reykjavik / Hinsegin Kórinn Bid Document #vv2022 #legatochoirs #festival