About the London Gay Symphonic Winds
Hi everyone and welcome to the London Gay Symphonic Winds.
We are an LGBT wind orchestra of around 40 woodwind, brass and percussion players based in central London. Our players come from a mix of backgrounds and playing abilities, from professional musicians, to people rediscovering an instrument they played at school. And of course, everything in between.
Our musical aim is to be both fun and challenging. We want to encourage improving musicianship in an enjoyable and supporting environment. We play a wide variety of music to suit our diversity, including band classics, orchestral arrangements, show tunes and of course, the odd bit of Abba and Madonna. If you want to see some examples of what we play, check out our repertoire page, or watch some of our videos.
We rehearse every week in Pimlico on Thursday evenings, and we take on new members throughout the year. We don’t have a formal audition process, our new members come along to a couple of rehearsals to see if we’re a good fit. If you are interested in joining, please see our joining page.
We love to play for people! The end result of all our hard work rehearsing new music is to perform concerts. We put on two big concerts a year, one in spring and one in autumn. But we don’t stop there, in the summer we like to get out into London and play on some of the many band stands throughout the city’s parks. In addition we regularly play for charity groups such as Age Concern and the Food Chain. If you would like to come and see us play, please check out our our Concerts page. And if you’d like to book us to play at your event, please head over to our Hire Us section.
We’re not just about the music though, we like to think of the LGSW as a big extended family. After every rehearsal we go for a few drinks in a local bar, and we regularly have other social events such as our summer picnic and our semi-annual Fun Days. Most of our members join the band to meet new people and we’d like to think we’re probably the friendliest band in London.
We love to do something special too. Every year we try to do at least one thing that we’ve never done before. In previous years this has included a trip to Paris and starting annual Band Camp weekends in Brighton. This year was learning to march and play for Pride. Next year, for 2012, London is hosting World Pride, and we hope to have the worldwide members of the Lesbian and Gay Band Association come over to London to play with us at Pride.
We hope to see you soon
