Shame Chorus is an uplifting new music project created by international visual and performance artist Jordan McKenzie, working in collaboration with London based writer Andy White, psychoanalyst Susie Orbach and the London Gay Men’s Chorus.

Shame Chorus was developed in association with the Freud Museum London taking  as it’s starting point Sigmund Freud’s famous ‘talking cure’ conceived to uncover hidden, repressed and unconscious desires.

“If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.” Bréne Brown, Research Professor in Shame and Vulnerability at the University of Houston, USA.

In a series of psychoanalytic interviews, Susie Orbach invited members of the Chorus to recall memories of feeling shamed – events that may have, in part, shaped their feelings about themselves and their sexuality.  Taking these recorded and anonymous interviews as their inspiration, established and emerging composers from a range of music genres have turned these memories into original songs and choral works.

For b-side 2016

Members of The London Gay Men’s Chorus will sing these at b-side festival  in a compelling live concert event that is a collective act of catharsis, community, celebration and liberation.

Shame Chorus will feature songs by commissioned composers Leo Chadburn, Shane Cullinan, David McAlmont, Conor Mitchell, Verity Susman, Jack White, Benjamin Till, Edmund Jolliffe, Steven Smith, Jessica Curry, Sarah Morrison and Billy Bragg.

London Gay Men’s Chorus: www.lgmc.org.uk

Twitter:  @jmckenzie_art   #shamechorus