Sydney Gay And Lesbian Choir Focus On Aussie Music In ‘Under The Milky Way’

The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir are set to return next week with a new show Under the Milky Way, a concert placing heavy emphasis on Australian music from thousands of years ago until now arranged in ways often never heard before.

For the SGLC’s choral conductor and music director since 2016 Adam Majsay, the name of the show (taken from The Church’s song of the same name) represents the motivation to make a show about Australia and all of its people.

“This nation has always been under the Milky Way, regardless of whether that’s 60,000 years ago or whether that’s today,” Adam tells City Hub. “We’ve got songs in Indigenous languages through to pop songs and all of those feel right with Under the Milky Way as our banner.”

That key theme wasn’t necessarily something that Adam and the rest of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir were aiming for while developing the show, but something that evolved in its development.

“I’ll often have a really clear idea of exactly the sort of journey I want the audience to be taken on,” he says. “But sometimes during the rehearsal, we start to understand these songs have a life and story of their own that weren’t apparent at the outset.”

It’s that kind of flexibility that allows the choir to incorporate tracks like Wendy Matthews’ The Day You Went Away, Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning, two Kylie Minogue songs and a unique three song medley of Great Southern Land/Solid Rock/Treaty by Icehouse, Goanna and Yothu Yindi.

Adam adds: “We’ve had people inside arrange some of the songs, as well as some external partners do some arrangements for us. We’ve got a few pieces that’ll be getting their world premiere at this show, so that’s pretty exciting!”

Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir an important place for community and creativity

Though some things about this show are different from what may be expected of the choir, Adam says it’s all firmly rooted in the founding ethos of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir. “SGLC absolutely began as a political force, but also a place for community building and safe space for the queer community in the early 90s,” he says.

“The community has evolved, and so has society to become a safer place these days. But that’s not necessarily the case for everyone every day. So we come together for a reason; because we love to make music, we love to sing, but at the heart of it we’re a community of people who have a shared, although really diverse, range of experiences as members of the LGBTQIA+ community or as friends, family or allies. It’s a really special place of kindred spirits.”

Not only is it a place for communal fulfillment, the SGLC is also an important creative outlet for its participants. Adam says: “I came to work as a conductor with the choir being a gay man in my late 30s and thinking ‘I’ve never connected to the community I’m apparently a part of.’ My background and passion is music, and for myself and the people in the choir making that music is a motivator on its own.”

“Every member of the choir has their own story about how they’ve found community through the choir. Maybe they just liked the idea of singing together, but what they’ve actually found is so much more than that. There’s this fantastic connection that comes from working really hard together, and that shared goal of ‘LEt’s make this the best we possibly can for an audience’ is community building in itself.”

“It’s for anyone who’s grown up with Australian radio playing in the background”

Despite the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir’s legacy as a space for queer community building, Adam stresses that everyone is welcome at the concert: “It’s for anyone who’s grown up with the Australian radio playing in the background, and there’ll be so many songs that spark memories for people. That’s the beautiful thing about this particular concert, the vast majority of the music is really familiar to many of our audience members.”

Though coy about any surprises the show may have (because then they wouldn’t be surprises, fair enough!), Adam does tease the feeling it’ll give. “I think our audiences are really gonna feel a part of this show,” he says. “But perhaps the surprise might be that they find themselves not just part of an audience, but part of the performance themselves.”

Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir are set to play two performances of Under the Milky Way at Petersham Town Hall on Saturday May 31st.