The Denver Women’s Chorus is celebrating its past as they march toward the future during its 40th anniversary concert HerStory, Our Future. The four-concert run begins Saturday, February 10, and continues the following weekend, February 17 and 18.
Featuring DWC’s greatest hits and new classics by Brandi Carlile, the Indigo Girls, among others, HerStory, Our Future will also feature memorabilia from the chorus’s four decades. DWC will also acknowledge several of its past artistic directors at specific performances.
In 1984, Carol White, a former church choral director with two master’s degrees in music and who had been fired 16 years earlier for being gay, approached the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus with an idea. What if she recruited women and partnered with DGMC to sing at an upcoming gay and lesbian festival? After 70 women joined DGMC to perform, the desire to continue singing was strong, and the Denver Women’s Chorus was born, offering a safe place for its members and an outlet for musical expression.
At the time, many singers did not allow their names to be printed in programs due to concerns they would face discrimination. Many feared for their jobs. Despite the obstacles they faced, they traveled to perform in New York and Washington D.C., joined in actions for social justice, and became the first treble chorus to perform at a GALA Choruses festival.
This is HerStory.
Forty years and seven artistic directors later, the Denver Women’s Chorus has cemented its name in the region and larger community as a proud trans- and nonbinary-inclusive chorus, composed of 130 united LGBTQAI+ singers and many dedicated allies.
Embracing diversity, equity, and intersectional feminism, DWC strives to promote social change through the music they create for each other and their audience. They have shared songs at marches, churches, libraries, museums, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and the Colorado State Capitol. They have collaborated with local nonprofit organizations, including the League of Women Voters, Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR), Safehouse Denver, Warren Village, The Gathering Place, and Mile High Freedom Band, and have performed alongside Barbara Higbie, Emma’s Revolution, Suzanne Westenhoefer, and Cris Williamson.
The chorus also has a long record of commissioning works from women composers, including From a Woman Sung, Women in War, I Do I Do But I Can’t, Quiet No More: A Choral Celebration of Stonewall, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City, Lifting As We Climb, by renowned composer Joan Szymko in honor of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, and many more.
DWC presents HerStory on Saturday, February 10, beginning at 7:30 pm at Parsons Theatre in Northglenn (including featured guest, the Denver Children’s Choir); Saturday, February 17, at 2:00 and 7:30 at Central Presbyterian Church in Denver; and Sunday, February 18, at 3:00 pm at Broomfield Auditorium. Tickets and more information are available at denverchoruses.org.