Not in the typical sense. This is not American Idol. Randy will place your range by running a few vocal exercises. He will also ask you the following:

Have you sung in a choir before? Do you play musical instruments or can you read music? And do you speak another language?

All to see where you are at in your musicality and if we can use you as resource for translations and pronunciations.

Almost all of us are recreational singers with varying skill levels. At some level, you do need to be able to listen to pitches and learn. Otherwise, we are here to learn from each other, improve, relax, hang out, and have fun!

Life happens, so you don’t need to show up every time. BUT commitment is half the battle! Practice makes (almost) perfect! And if there are planned performances, we need you, so yes, show up.

Rehearsals are every Monday from 7:00 to 9:00 PM. We switch every other week between San Francisco and Oakland.

Mondays from 7 to 9 PM.

The first and third Mondays are in San Francisco. The second and fourth Mondays are in Oakland. Any fifth Fridays are in San Francisco, or taken as a break.

Both sites are homes of chorus members in residential neighborhoods that are relatively safe. We ask that you respect house rules (shoes off). There are plenty of street parking. They are accessible via MUNI (San Francisco) and BART (Oakland).

Depending on the planned events, our repertoire emphasizes songs in the languages of Asia and the Pacific Islands.

But we sing songs of all kinds, including standards of classical and popular European and American music. Yes, you might be warbling out Latin in addition to Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino.

We are up to 200 performances in the last 34 years!

We’ve sung in birthdays, weddings, and funerals; festivals and fundraisers; packed concerts; backyard parties and drag shows; and in theatrical halls, churches, and temples.

We sang the national anthem once at the Oakland Coliseum for the Golden State Warriors!

No venue is too small or too large.

Almost all of the events are local. Our international debut was at the Out Games in Montreal, Canada in 2006. That was followed by the Hand in Hand Festival in Taipei, Taiwan in 2015 and in Tokyo, Japan in 2019. And we sang in our first GALA Choruses Festival in 2016 in Denver, Colorado.

We are going to GALA Minneapolis in 2024.

We are a diverse group of around 20-30 vocalists. We trace our roots to Island Southeast Asia (e.g., Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia), East Asia (Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam), South Asia (India), and the Pacific Islands (Hawai’i and Guam).

We are inter-generational, ranging in age from 20s to 60s. Some of us have been in the group from the start, others are new. Some have left for years and then returned. Roughly half live in San Francisco and the other half in the East Bay. The furthest active member lives in Nevada.

We love commitment. Those who stick around find there’s family here. Once you are in, you are in for life. The door is always open.

GAPA Fund welcomes individuals who share our passion and values to join as volunteer board directors, event contractors, or sponsored individuals/organizations.

Membership in GAPA Men’s Chorus is specifically for self-identifying gay, bi, trans, or queer men within the Asian American and Pacific Islander community as it is an affinity group. It provides an inclusive space to celebrate our intersecting identities, fostering cultural understanding, solidarity, and expression through music. The chorus proudly showcases AAPI voices on stage, affirming our presence in the world.

A few chorus members are English-only speakers, but many more of us are conversant in other languages, including,

Ilokano, Tagalog, Bisaya, Gaddang, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Malay, and Hawaiian, in addition to your standard European (English, Spanish, French, and German).

We first performed on November 3, 1989, which was a Friday, at the Metropolitan Community Church in the heart of the Castro (150 Eureka Street) in San Francisco. It was called “GAPA Talent/Untalent Show”.

The late Mayor Ed Lee, a friend of GAPA, declared May 31, 2015 as GAPA Men’s Chorus Day in San Francisco!

We have been invited to sing the most by our Friends at the Buddhist Church of San Francisco, the Eden United Church of Christ in Hayward, CA, and the Fresh Meat Festival.

We eat. We drink. We sing. We’re as much a social group as we are a musical one. We celebrate holidays and milestones; we dine after rehearsals.

And we throw our chorus soirees and salons. They started in 2010 and they kept going. They’re open mic/stage in an inspired host’s living room or a karaoke bar for anyone who wants to release their burning inner diva. Amuse us with your talent. Eat, gossip, converse, drink, and be merry!