“Taking over a city and filling it with song.”
That’s the mission of the quadrennial GALA Choruses Festival, the world’s largest gathering of LGBTQ singers and choirs. This week, that city will be Minneapolis. Or at least the southern end of its downtown.
“My first festival was in 1996, and we took over the city of Tampa,” Jane Ramseyer Miller said last week from her south Minneapolis home. “And you could just see around you all these LGBTQ people, because they were wearing their delegate badges. Not only did you feel that you had this community of queer people with you, but you were all choral nerds.”
Ramseyer Miller has been artistic director of GALA Choruses since 2010, and has held the same position with all of the Twin Cities major LGBTQ choirs, most notably 27 years heading One Voice Mixed Chorus. She was getting prepared for this choral takeover of Minneapolis when COVID-19 struck in 2020, canceling the festival.
But now it’s on, with 7,000 singers and 122 choirs expected to converge upon the city and perform over 50 concerts in five days, all of them open to the public. There will be free concerts at Peavey Plaza outside Orchestra Hall Wednesday through Sunday and ticketed concerts inside the hall and at the Minneapolis Convention Center Auditorium, Central Lutheran Church and Westminster Presbyterian Church.
“On Wednesday at Peavey Plaza [at 5 p.m.], we’re doing a huge singalong,” Ramseyer Miller said. “Just calling people into a circle together. We’re going to hum together, acknowledge the land that we’re standing on, and sing two songs as a choir of 7,000.”
Among those 7,000 will be members of choirs from several countries, including China, Ukraine, Taiwan, Finland, Estonia and Mexico. Most will be performing at the “Harmonies of the Sphere” concert, 7:15 p.m. Saturday at Orchestra Hall.
“In today’s political climate, it can be scary to be a queer person,” Ramseyer Miller said. “Because it feels like rights, in general, are being taken away. And people are feeling very vulnerable. So, to have a festival like this, where 7,000 people descend on a city and sing together, is incredibly healing.”