A sea of singers streamed into downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday for GALA Choruses Festival 2024, a 5-day North American LGBTQ choral festival encompassing over 200 concerts and 7,000 voices. Normally taking place every four years, the festival last happened in Denver in 2016. Festival 2020, scheduled to take place in Minneapolis, was canceled due to COVID-19.
The first big sing-along event, “Rise Up Singing, Together Again,” got moved from Peavey Plaza to the Minneapolis Convention Center because of the rain. There, thousands of singers filled up the MCC’s auditorium. Jane Ramseyer Miller, artistic director of GALA — and former artistic director for One Voice Mixed Chorus — led the first song, “On The Day We Are Together Again,” by Humbird (the moniker for Minnesota singer-songwriter Siri Undlin).
Set to the African American spiritual, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” Undlin first performed the song on Youtube in 2020, with lyrics that expressed hope for gathering again. Undlin’s recently updated lyrics speak of gathering together in the present tense, remembering loved ones who have passed. After teaching the melody, Ramseyer Miller and the GALA team went about teaching the harmonies to the audience full of singers.
Aiding that task were the Multae Voces, one of eight “festival choruses” formed during the GALA week. The choir had just two rehearsals on Wednesday before performing at 5:30, and demonstrated the different harmonies. “Here.
