This new season began with a happy event: the marriage of two of our members. Sing Out members were out in force. After all, our choir is first and foremost a community, in which love is present in all its forms.
Danielle and Sheila’s love story is a beautiful one. It belongs to them and we won’t share it here. But their love story with the choir is also beautiful. Danielle, originally from the USA, discovered Sing Out at Brussels Pride 2022. She immediately felt that this group matched what she was looking for, both musically and on a human level. She auditioned the following summer and joined the ranks of Soprani 1. Danielle doesn’t drive and lives a long way from Brussels. So it’s her partner Sheila who drives her to rehearsals every Wednesday evening. Sheila is there every week, and has gradually made friends with the members of Sing Out. After a few months, although she never imagined she would one day be part of a choir, she became a ‘non-singing member’. Since last year, they have both sat on our Board.
This isn’t the first time we’ve attended the wedding of one of our members. We’ve sung at the weddings of Josephine and Ben, Sarah and Caitlin, Julie and Violaine, and Kelci and Laura. But this is the first time we’ve sung at the wedding of two of our members. Soon we’ll be attending the weddings of two more of our members who met through the choir.
Our LGBTQI+ choir is a community choir. The music is the primary focus, but the group also provides a safe space for members of the LGBTQI+ community to flourish without fear of judgement. We share many moments together: the pleasure of the stage, trips, meals, festive activities… It’s not surprising that bonds are formed. These bonds come in various forms: a very strong friendship, a little passing fling, a mad love. Some people are in a relationship (straight or gay), others are single, by choice or not, some couples live together, others not, some people are looking for love, others not. Some people have experienced difficult break-ups, others are ready to make a fresh start. Some people are asexual, aromantic, polyamorous…
Our choir is international. Many of our members come from countries where living with a gender identity or sexual orientation outside the norm is not possible, where marriage between two people of the same sex is science fiction, while Belgium has been uniting LGBTQI+ couples for 21 years. Singing at LGBTQI+ weddings as a choir is therefore also a political act and has an impact not only on the lives of our members, but also on the image we project to our audience.
Whatever form it takes, this love that we share within the choir is present everywhere and was reflected in Danielle and Sheila’s wedding, which we celebrated by gathering around them as a chosen family.