The Last Night of the Proms comes early this year as LGSW celebrate the best of British at our Spring Concert, which takes place on Saturday March 24th at St. George’s, Bloomsbury.

LGSW will take you on a musical nostalgia trip via Folksongs, The Beatles and Freddie Mercury and then round things off with the famous Fantasia on British Sea Songs, seen at the Royal Albert Hall every year. So bring your union jacks and get ready for a pink-hued slice of pomp and circumstance.

Prom-Tastic takes place at 7.30pm on March 24th at St. Georges, Bloomsbury. Click here for a Google map or visit the St Georges website here.

Buy your ticket in advance and save £2! (£5 instead of £7 on the door)

Signs that the 2012 Olympics are on their way can be spotted all over town.  From the construction, to the posters, and even events in support, Londoners are looking forward to this massive global event.  On Friday, 9th December, the London 2012 Olympics Pride House had its official launch and the LGSW were delighted to be included.

Wondering what a ‘Pride House’ is? Pride House will be one of the many Olympic ‘houses’ in London during the 2012 Games.  It aims to provide an awesome venue for fun and entertainment, but more than that it’ll be a networking hub for the global LGBT community and also be a focus for programmes aimed at education, tolerance and the encouragement of diversity.

The launch event was a great success.  The evening began with drinks and canapés, and some light music provided by a string quartet from our friends at LGSO. We quickly moved to speeches from several notable people, including Pride House Director Chad Molleken, who inspired us with a vision of what this House aims to be: more than just a public venue, Pride House will be a symbol of acceptance to the world.  A cocktail reception and networking break was next, where the LGSW performed pop classics such as Take That’s “Shine,” Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” and Lady Gaga’s “The Edge Of Glory.”

We were honoured to be a part of this fantastic event and hope to work closely with the Pride House team again in the coming months!

More information about Pride House can be found at their website: http://pridehouselondon.co.uk/

Photo credit: Nicolas Chinardet of Zefrog

A selection of LGSW players provided our unique brand of fun, pop-tastic musical stylings during the champagne reception and dinner.  We don’t think the guests quite knew what hit them when we started into Britney Spears’ Toxic after grace was said!

With the support of the LGSW and the organisation’s wonderful staff and volunteers, the event raised over £35,000 for The Food Chain!  This phenomenal amount will help the Food Chain support people during times of medical or financial crisis and ensure that people are provided with the tools they need to manage their own condition and live healthy independent lives.  For more information about the work of the Food Chain, please visit their website.

We are always pleased to team up with charities for events and causes that are close to our hearts, so if you think we can help your organisation, please get in touch with us.

The London Gay Symphonic Winds is an LGBT wind orchestra of around 40 woodwind, brass and percussion players of all levels based in central London.  The LGSW regularly performs two solo concerts per year and has performed for Pride London, Age Concern, the Food Chain, London Zoo’s Gay Day, and various band stands across London.

For more information, please email enquiries@lgsw.org.uk with Concerto Audition in the subject line.

What’s better than a great book, good food and fabulous music, all amongst good (and worshipful) company?  A selection of LGSW players was pleased to provide the musical entertainment at the 18 October launch of chef and writer Allegra McEvedy’s latest book, Bought, Borrowed & Stolen: Recipes and Knives from a Travelling Chef at the historic hall of the Worshipful Company of Cutlers in London.  Under the leadership of our resident arranger extraordinaire, Oliver Lidgate, our wind and brass quintets serenaded the well-fed guests with many fun pop-inspired pieces, including Shine, Rehab, I Gotta Feeling and …Baby One More Time.  We think a little Britney, Madonna and Kylie provided the perfect accompaniment to cocktails and canapés.

We love playing private events and the LGSW has a wide range of repertoire to suit all tastes.  We can provide a group as big or small as your event requires.  If you’re interested in having the fabulous musicians of the LGSW create fun musical memories for your event, please get in touch!

See more photos of the event here

The London Gay Symphonic Winds were back at St. George’s Church in Bloomsbury on October 28th for ‘Show Tune Crazy!’ – an evening of songs and medleys from a wide range of favourite musicals and operas.

With nearly 200 people packing the venue (our biggest ever concert audience!) we performed a wide selection of music including South Pacific, Les Misérables, Phantom Of The Opera, The Barber Of Seville, Fiddler On The Roof and Candide.

Highlights included a raucous rendition of Copacabana (featuring ten percussionists and a dazzling array of feathered head-dresses) and an encore of Toxic by Britney Spears.

It was the most succesful concert we have ever put on and a great platform from which to build towards our next concert in the spring.

We’ll see you back at St. Georges in March 2012!

The band performed the Welsh traditional melody ‘David Of The White Rock’ just before the two minute silence held at 8pm to remember victims of hate crime. We also combined forces with the Pink Singers, London Gay Men’s Chorus and Diversity Choir to close the event with an uplifting rendition of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’.

We will be performing a 15 minute set at the start of the Thursday, 17^th November’s performance at the Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone.  We share the stage with Marcus Reeves, Olifanttakeover Teatro, Johnny Guim, Ezra Axelrod, and Denis Fernando.  It’s sure to be a gay old time, so please join us!

Tickets are £15 (£10 concession) and can be purchased here.  For more information about the GFest performances, workshops and activities, please visit their site: http://www.gaywisefestival.org.uk

What’s more fun than playing show tunes? Playing show tunes with added pizza and wine. A couple of times a year the LGSW has a Saturday Fun Day, and this weekend was our most recent one. Like many of our activities, the idea for our Fun Days started as a “wouldn’t it be cool if…” discussion in the pub. 18 months later, the tradition is now going strong, and we’ve just had our third one. The idea is to have a nice long relaxed day of playing and socialising, and it’s a really great opportunity for new people to come along and try out the band.

This weekend was no exception. We welcomed 40 people to the Seven Dials Club in Covent garden, including a good number of new players. Most stayed for the whole day, but people are free to come for as much or as little time as they like. We have our next concert – Show Tune Crazy – coming up at the end of October, so we spent a lot of time playing the music for that, but there was some other music thrown in too.

Everyone settled in really well, and despite the early start within a short while we were sounding great. It’s really satisfying playing in such a large band, and in a bigger room than our usual Thursday rehearsals. The time flew by, and with songs from Les Mis, Phantom and Fiddler on the Roof stuck in our heads, we ventured out to Pizza Express for lunch, and some well appreciated air conditioning.

Appetites satisfied, and sufficient wine consumed, we took up instruments again. The afternoon saw us sight-reading selections from Annie, plus a full run through of Candide, and more. Plus the results of the quiz that had been running throughout the day (for once, with a clear winning team). Soon the day’s playing was over and then it was time for an evening in Soho taking with us the new friends we’d made during the day.

If you weren’t able to make it to this Fun Day, why not keep an eye out for our next one, happening in January. Subscribe to our mailing list at the top of the window to be kept up to date, or visit our Join Us page. Or if you don’t play an instrument, but want to see what we got up to during the day, come along to our concert – Show Tune Crazy – and we’ll show you what we can do.

See some more photos from the day in our gallery.

Patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time takes a little getting used to… try playing a wind instrument whilst walking in a straight line without knocking into anyone. This is what the LGSW learnt to do for London Gay Pride 2011.

The majority of the band had never marched before and it was with hesitant excitement that we prepared for our first outing as a marching band. We needed to buy lyres (attachable music stands) for our instruments and LGSW t-shirts so we all looked super cool for the crowds that would descend on London to watch the parade. We also needed to learn to walk and play at the same time…

In the preceding weeks we devoted part of each rehearsal to learn the music we were going to play which included It’s Raining Men, Bad Romance and Toxic! I would have loved to be a fly on the wall watching us march around St. Saviour’s Church in Pimlico playing It’s Raining Men for the first time! Gradually we improved and discovered that it is possible to do more than one thing at the same time and to even be in time with each other.

The day itself was so much fun! We went down really well with the audience who at points joined in by singing. It was such a great feeling playing to so many people and was so uplifting sharing what we love doing with the LGBT community in such a positive way! After the march we played a concert for the Camden older LGBT group chill-out zone at St. Anne’s, Soho this again show cased what a strong group we have become. We finished the day off with drinks in Soho, soaking up the atmosphere with our LGSW friends and family!