setting up this choir with people who
are trans and non-binary it's an act of
resistance but it's also joyful
classical music in general is very
gendered and very binary in its
processes
we're taking up space we're here to stay
and make sure our voices are heard
[Music]
we set up trans voices really it was
born out of london contemporary voices
in which both koda and i think
my experience with lcp has been very
much simultaneous as my journey towards
defining my own identity
even though the choir and the entire
organization and all the people have
been very kind to me i still didn't feel
like my absolute most authentic self
let's say
shared a very similar thought and a very
similar feeling and we kind of discussed
that realistically what could be
happening is that we're probably the
only people
anywhere on the gender spectrum that's
not one end or the other
and at the same time as that we've been
working with rhys lions
reece is a a good friend and a poet we
did a women in music concert with under
contemporary voices at the union chapel
rhys experienced some really unpleasant
transphobic abuse in the interval of the
concert when i was outside i had someone
make a really extremely transphobic
comment to me and that person is now
removed from the room she came out and
addressed the audience in this most
brilliant powerful way my job as an
artist is not to entertain you
my job as an artist is to expand the
emotional capacity of my audience
and i want to emphasize the fact and the
need for safe spaces i was kind of
supporting that and watching it and it
was just this thing of like i've been
living with this
and i haven't been
living my truth fully
after that happened it felt like one of
those things that i just couldn't ignore
anymore and it was really
out of conversations with coda that we
started planning this
one of the reasons we set up transvoices
was to address the lack of
representation in music
our first task for the choir is to
co-create songs for our performance at
union chapel
and so this music is made in the moment
and it's using improvisation techniques
we've come up with ourselves to explore
our voices and connect with each other
[Music]
it's amazing to hear our voices filling
it up
and it just feels like more and more
we're reclaiming it
[Music]
making stuff together is beautiful and
trans voices making stuff together is i
think even more beautiful
[Music]
coming out as non-binary and
living truly or
freely um is that you start to really
see how like gendered the rest of the
world is part of the reason i thought it
was
important to not just be out personally
but be out professionally is because i'm
desperate to change that
that traditional voice separation of
sopranos alto centers and bases for the
first time i experienced it when i was
maybe like six or seven because i used
to sing in a children's choir and i was
an alto at the time before my voice
broke because i went to first puberty
i was trained more on a scale where it
was more appropriate for
someone who was male
and i remember a singing teacher was
always saying go lower go lower and that
was quite
triggering
it's so strange to have such gendered
expectations of music
when if you look at the history of opera
it is essentially high arts gender
you know and i don't really
understand why people don't lean into
that more
[Applause]
i'm really excited about being in the
same room with other trans singers and
musicians and the opportunity to create
a community that's really
precious to me
[Music]
my relationship with my voice is so
precious to me like it's got me through
some of my hardest times i consider my
true voice to be quite androgynous
i guess hard for people to place on the
traditional gender binary
i used to experience a lot of dysphoria
around it and sometimes still do
gender dysphoria is when a person's
gender identity and the sex that they
were assigned at birth are in conflict
with each other
and so i think with singing you have
this interplay between your singing
voice which is so precious to you but
then also something so fundamental to
your identity as your gender
the sound that i make is
inherently
tied to my physical
self i
have been lucky enough to be able to
secure how i feel about my physical body
by having top surgery there are still
days that are dysphoric and horrible but
my body makes my sound
and i love that sound and i think
that sound to me is worth
anything
difficult that might be brought up
i'm really excited to see the work that
the choir has created so i'm not a part
of the choir myself but i was part of
the writing process so i created some
writing exercises
for the trans people in the choir to
create the song itself
[Music]
poetry needs to have a rhythm and a kind
of sass and kind of like
serious fears
it feels so exciting that
we started this entire journey at union
chapel and now
well over two years later we're
finishing it there as well
[Music]
i feel amazing to be back here and feel
more comfortable and confident in the
space
[Music]
i'm looking forward to the exploring of
my voice in a space that allows it to be
as expensive as it wants to be
[Music]
ah
fear
never quite leaves me
resonating through my bones
how long do i still have with my voice
[Music]
i feel suffocated
honey
dribbling down my chin
lethargic
like the one
kernel of sand they see
will never pick up
[Music]
i am here to reclaim my future
the scars
the uncertainty the horror
i am here to reclaim my time
my joy
i am the monster the mystery
i am everything they feared and
i am trans liberation
i
am here
beautiful ornate voices before me
all my nanas who acquire
[Music]
it's okay
[Music]
foreign
[Music]
i see myself
coming out of my shell
why are we so broken
hearing my voice
[Music]
i want it to go ahead of me
i want my voice
to exist in a space that is
bodyless
that doesn't need anything
but to drift and be free
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
i feel safe
open awake
there's joy in the pain my voice is me
i want to feel every single breath of it
without a drop of inhibition
[Music]
in a world of sound like love
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
what is the purpose of denying our
existence
my voice is the power to tear down
civilizations
i'm here to reclaim
everything
queer
beautiful
stolen
if they will not let us in their cities
we will build
new ones
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
mirrors are not the only things that can
show you what you look like
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
in a way the most important thing for me
was finding a group of people
who i could sing with who were like me
because
i never sing in rooms with people who
are like me
[Music]
this project is about coming together as
a community and creating our own
narrative
and allowing us to be the storytellers
rather than it always be looked at from
the outside
it just feels like
such a safe and special
space
i feel very free in the space really
free
[Music]
you