Gay Mens Chorus of Charlotte

Our mission: Through artistic achievement, education, and engagement, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Charlotte endeavors to create a society which values and respects its LGBT members.

GMCC  conducts year-round programming in four primary areas:

• Ticketed concerts. Each year, GMCC produces at least three subscription concerts in various venues around Charlotte. These concerts feature music from many different musical genres, from standards of the western choral tradition to pop and jazz to world music.
• Community engagement. Community engagement is central to GMCC’s mission. Last year alone, GMCC conducted over 30 free community-based performances reaching nearly 20,000 people in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. 
• Singer education. Continuing educational opportunities to amateur choral singers are difficult to come by. GMCC addresses this need by providing three primary programs of education to area choral singers:
  • The A Cappella Experience which provides 1.5 days of workshops for individual singers and full ensembles. Participants have the opportunity to learn from international-level clinicians in a workshop environment that includes lecture, master classes, and performance. The content is exclusively focused on a cappella singing and includes genres from pop to classical to Barbershop.
  • Community Choral Clinics which provides singers from across the community access to learning opportunities from exceptional choral conductors and educations from within the LGBTQ+ choral movement. Topics have included music history, performance practice, a cappella singing, choral technique, vocal health, sight-reading, and many others. Over 300 people have participated, representing over 50 community and church choral ensembles.
  • Basic Singer Skills Building, an on-going program of singer education, aimed at improving singers' knowledge of music theory and relevant music history.
• School engagement. GMCC is the only LGBTQ+ arts organization providing on-campus programming for area schools. Each year, in conjunction with The A Cappella Experience, GMCC takes an internationally-acclaimed clinician and GMCC singers into schools to provide a unique learning opportunity to students and faculty.  

 GMCC conducts 40% of its community engagement efforts outside of Mecklenburg County. It’s clear from looking at the voting patterns for Amendment 1 and HB2 that there is tremendous opportunity for positive change in NC’s more rural counties, many of which surround Mecklenburg. GMCC partners with existing organizations in communities across the state in an effort to give voice to what they are doing. By helping to bring increased attention to them, we seek to help them marshal resources necessary for carrying out the critical work of social change in their community.