The Rainbow Chorus Waterloo-Wellington begins 2026 with Pride & Joy, a concert that brings together music, community, and shared purpose. Taking place on Saturday, January 24, 2026, this program highlights how choral music can express resilience, solidarity, and joy within the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, especially at a time when visibility and support continue to matter.
How does this concert use music to express resilience, solidarity, and joy within the 2SLGBTQIA+ community?
All music has the potential to trigger emotion but hearing music live adds to that emotion and hearing over a hundred voices from the queer community and their active allies lifting together, magnifies the messages carried in these purposefully selected pieces. With the range of emotion and human experience explored in the individual pieces, throughout the entirety of the concert we tap into feelings of joyous celebration, grief, anger, solidarity and hope for a better future. Aside from the specifics of the songs themselves, the music choirs create depends on collaboration, listening, practice and patience. The music we create is at its core an expression of that commitment and work, of that desire to be present and visible as a community made up of individuals, raising our voices together, not as a single melody in unison, but in harmonic parts that take turns with leading or supporting, holding silence or building energy; the music we create is therefore a physical expression of our existence, who we are, and what we share.
What excites you most, as artists, about bringing this particular program to the stage?
Musically speaking, this program includes a wide range of pieces that require different approaches and technique, something always exciting for any performer. Including selections from contemporary popular queer artists, musical theatre, counter-culture protest music, and early 20th century poetry, as well as others, this program has offered us the chance to explore different genres and ways in which our strengths as a choir can be utilized. From the more technically difficult pieces with carefully timed layers sung by different sections, to rousing favourites we hope everyone will join us in singing, this program has something for everyone to connect with and enjoy and we can’t wait to share it with our audiences.
What role does communal singing play in building visibility and connection for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community?
Dating back to the AIDS crisis of the 1970s, choirs like ours have been making and holding space for members of our community to not only come together and build community with each other but to stand and exist in the public sphere in a distinct way.
The vast majority of the time spent as a choir member is in rehearsal. For a couple hours every week we get to come together as a community and spend time participating in an enjoyable and expressive activity, tapping into cultural roots of not only the 2SLGBTQIA+ community but also traditions of human connection and gathering dating back throughout history. Communal singing is a distinct experience of sharing and working together, one that resonates deeply within all of us, both literally and figuratively. By coupling that activity with identity and public performance, choirs offer us the chance to feel and share our joy and the beauty of our lives, without ignoring the pain and hurt our community lives with as a marginalized and vulnerable group.
When it comes to the other side of choir participation, performance, choirs offer us the chance to connect with the public at large in a way that doesn’t centre around divisive topics or upsetting events. At the same time, selection of particular pieces or artists, and the inclusion of spoken pieces in performances allow us to address more sensitive topics and foster deeper insight and understanding with the broader community. And, ultimately, our performances remind the world we are here, we always will be, and that our lives can include community, joy, and celebration.
What do you hope audiences will feel or take away after attending this performance?
We hope they enjoy the experience and leave feeling connected and moved by what we’ve had to offer. We hope they can see the work we’ve put into learning these pieces, especially as a non-audition choir with many members having never sung in a choir prior to joining us, and that they feel we’ve done the pieces justice with our performance of them.
When it comes to who we are as a queer choir, just as we feel connected to each other through the shared experience of singing, we hope that our audiences will leave our performances feeling a connection with us as well, regardless of their own identity and relationship to the queer community. In today’s world, perhaps more than ever in recent history, it is important to remember each other’s humanity, to see each other and build common bonds. Building understanding and compassion often starts with a personal connection and we hope that our audiences leave with a deeper sense of what it means to be a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, and a more personal sense of connection to our community and the individuals of which it is made up.
We appreciate each and every member of the audience coming out to support and encourage us and we hope they leave feeling that appreciation and gratitude. We hope they know that their attendance at an event hosted by a queer organization matters, beyond what they may or may not learn or their financial contribution via the purchase of a ticket, seeing a room full of welcoming faces eager to hear our voices and share in our work, we hope they all leave knowing how much each individual person’s presence means to us.
Pride & Joy takes place on Saturday, January 24, 2026, with performances at 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM at Harcourt United Church. Tickets and additional event details are available through The Rainbow Chorus Waterloo-Wellington’s website and ticketing platforms.
