About us

In March 2001, the municipal Protestant church council in Cologne initiated a meeting for people of every race and colour, bounded together by their mutual love of Black Gospel music. Within a few weeks, a group of singers joined together to form a choir. Angelica Rehaag, the choir-master of the Gospel Academy in Krefeld, undertook the directorship of this group and so emerged the independent Cologne Gospel-choir - Light of Life.



The first rehearsals were held with great engagement and energy on the part of the participants. The fervour of the music captivated the choir; but for the male and female singers, much work lay ahead. The strict, but at the same time sensitive leadership of Angelica Rehaag, enabled the choir to experience the feeling of black contemporary gospel music - the gospel of the coloured people; music full of power and joy, with both a moving and inspiring effect.

After one year of intensive rehearsals the choir was ready for its first concert. In May 2002, during the Cologne Bridges Festival, the church council organised an “International Gospel Event” for the choir at the Trinitatis church in Cologne. The reception given from a packed audience exceeded all expectations. The concert was so well received that some members of the audience applied to join the choir after the performance.

Today, the choir has approximately 120 active male and female participants and has since performed at countless festivals, concerts and church services in Cologne and the surrounding state of North Rhine- Westphalia. The Light of Life e.V. is now an established part of the choir scene in Cologne and succeeds with each performance, not only to enthuse its audience with the music of the “Contemporary Black Gospels”, but to also to convey what the choir itself has found in this music:

The joy of life and our gratitude
for that which God grants us every day we live.
This is the message of the songs/prayers we sing.