Salford
Le Gateau Chocolat: Spirituals
A homily of Black Queer excellence through Negro-Spirituals
Le Gateau Chocolat delivers a Sunday Service like no other, in an ode to two ground-breaking Black American sopranos - Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle. Collaborating with renowned Musical Director - Allyson Devenish (NitroVOX, ENO), performing a selection of Norman & Battle's famed 1990 Carnegie Hall concert ?Sing Spirituals?.
Blurring the lines between spirituality or religion, and spiritualism of self, Gateau?s Spirituals will take our congregation on a journey of the soul.
Seeing Jessy Norman and Kathleen Battle perform with an all white orchestra opened ideas that young Gateau could barely imagine, and now lives. Where acceptance of self meant defiance of his deeply Christian Nigerian upbringing, the power in the music of these hallowed spaces was transformative - from church to Carnegie Hall, and now Wales Millennium Centre.
Welcome to Gateau?s sacred space - his stage, his church, his dance floor - his safe space. Safe to explore the rich complexity of how songs born in slavery beget salvation; and where diaspora and drag collide the way only Le Gateau Chocolat can.
