Boston
Singers' Resource News Bulletin, November 2007
Making Music, Making History: The Boston Gay Men's Chorus
By Sarah Brannnen
It’s a rare chorus that performs world premieres by great contemporary composers as well as taking the stage in costume for Broadway song-and-dance, and it’s a rare experience for choral singers to be escorted to concert halls under armed guard. The Boston Gay Men’s Chorus has done all this, and far more, just in the last few years. As well as presenting probably the widest variety of music performed by any chorus in New England, the group is founded on a mission of inclusion, community activism, and outreach. Above all, they try to give their singers a home as well as a rich musical experience.
“It’s part of our mission to be a place for people to come together,” says executive director Steven Smith. “We’re as much a family as we are a chorus.”
The Boston Gay Men’s Chorus presents three holiday concerts, titled “Peace on Earth,” on December 7 and 8 in Jordan Hall in Boston, and they will perform two world premieres on April 5 in Symphony Hall. Details about these concerts and more are listed below and on the Boston Gay Men's Chorus website: bgmc.org
The chorus was founded in 1982. Their first conductor was Josef Bevins, who died the following year. He was succeeded by Lee Ridgeway, and in 1985 by Robert Barney. Since 1997, Reuben M. Reynolds has had the position of music director.
“I grew up on a little farm in South Georgia,” says Reynolds, “I didn’t ever hear a symphony orchestra until I was 23. I went to school to get a degree in economics, and I started playing piano on the side and fell into doing this.”
Reynolds received his Master of Music degree from Louisiana State University. Before coming to Boston, he was the conductor of the Heartland Men’s Chorus in Kansas City. He and his partner had spent all their lives in the South before moving to Boston.
“We felt it was time for a move, this job came open, and it seemed like the right thing to do… we wanted to see what it was like to live in a Northern City. I love it! We both love it. For us, it’s a dream come true to be here in the middle of so much wonderful music-making. To have something like the Boston Singers’ Resource, where I can go to find young singers, and to have all this talent to draw on is just so invigorating to me. “
In addition to his choral work, Reynolds has extensive experience as an opera conductor. He recently led a new production of Candide at Boston Conservatory, and he conducts many musicals there. He brings his dramatic expertise to frequent Broadway-inspired numbers by the BGMC, performed in costume and danced by chorus members and guest artists.
“As a singer, what I most enjoy is the really diverse programming that we do,” says Steven Smith. “What’s unique about the BGMC is that we sing a mix of classical, popular, folk and basically every style and genre. It makes sense based on our mission, which is to reach as many people as we can, and to share our message of social change and civil rights.”
The chorus performs three subscription concerts each year: a holiday concert, a spring concert, and a performance at Boston’s Gay Pride Week in the summer. They perform many other concerts, however: “We do seven to twelve outreach concerts and events each year,” says Smith. “Our current focus is on our GLBT Youth Outreach where we donate our services to do benefit concerts for public high schools to support their gay student associations. We just did a great program for the Bromfield School in Harvard, and we have also sung at the Belmont, Concord-Carlisle, and Lincoln-Sudbury high schools. We also do outreach to benefit HIV research, and we'll be singing for the world's leading AIDS researchers at the International Retrovirus Conference in February.”
The chorus has performed at many Human Rights Campaign dinners, and special appearances have included the re-opening of the Boston Opera House, an opening at the Museum of Fine Arts, the 1999 Boston Pops July 4th Esplanade concert and telecast, the grand opening concert of the Fleet Center, Boston Lyric Opera’s The Flying Dutchman, and the American Guild of Organists National Convention. Small groups from the chorus also perform in cabaret evenings.
The high school outreach performances have sometimes sparked protests; before a concert last April at the Concord-Carlisle Regional High School, the right-wing Article 8 Alliance called the concert “depraved” and attacked the school and the Chorus on its website and through a state-wide email blast. They accused the school of pushing "the homosexual agenda" by hosting the performance. Despite this negative start, however, the chorus reports that the concert was a rousing success.
The chorus made history and international news in 2005 with its tour of Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. “We sang, at the invitation of the mayor of Berlin, at Berlin Pride for 500,000 people,” says Reynolds. “The chorus there was quite small, and one of the guys there was so impressed he moved here to sing with us.” But the real drama took place when the chorus arrived in Poland. Steven Smith writes:
“After we arrived in Berlin, we heard reports that a gay pride march in Warsaw had been violent and that there were rumors of a protest brewing about our concert. Some of our German hosts thought we were crazy to go to Poland.
“[In Poland} I went down to the hotel lobby for breakfast and noticed that two police vans were blocking both ends of the hotel driveway…. It seemed that an extreme right wing Catholic group named the League of Polish Families had issued a press release which stated that they would purchase all remaining concert tickets in order to occupy the concert hall and force cancellation of the concert. The League had spent a week pressuring the Philharmonic to cancel our concert. They also threatened to form a human chain around the hall to prohibit the Chorus from entering.
“We made the painful decision to suspend ticket sales and the box office was instructed to only honor the 200 tickets bought in advance. Chorus members were warned to travel in small groups, not to wear any clothing that identified them as gay, and to stick close to the hotel.
“The chorus was transported to the concert hall with police escorts. An empty lot next door had five more blue police vans filled with officers and riot gear. TV crews from Wroclaw, Warsaw, Katowice, Poznan and other cities were set up in the hall, waiting to film our rehearsal for the evening news reports.
“While the Chorus was rehearsing, the protesters arrived. They began shouting through bullhorns and unfurled signs and banners with crude anti-gay cartoons and black flags with their logo. Only about 20 of them showed up, and a phalanx of police stood between them and the entrance to the hall.
“Much to our surprise, a counter demonstration made up of mostly college-age kids began on the other side of the hall. When we saw a pride flag go up, we knew they were on our side! Each side yelled at the other for an hour, with the police firmly in the middle. A crowd of about 200 people watched from across the street. Armed police were posted on nearby roofs. The box office resumed ticket sales.
“It was finally time for the concert, and our 120 singers entered the hall to a full house. More than 300 tickets had been sold during the protest! Just to be safe, plainclothes security guards provided by the hall were stationed about strategically. TV cameras were positioned in the aisles. Warm but formal applause followed our opening number, “Free to Love.” Then the Chorus began to sing “Gaude Mater Polonia,” a hymn that has been the unofficial anthem of Poland for hundreds of years. The crowd immediately jumped from their seats and stood silently while the guys sang. Some of the older people in the audience began to cry. We could only imagine how it felt to hear that song, with Poland’s long and complicated history, being sung by a gay chorus… Nearly everyone — singers and audience alike — were crying tears of joy and relief.
We presented the proceeds of the concert, about $2000 US, to a local home for children with HIV/AIDS.” (Excerpted from bgmc.org, by Steven Smith, with permission. For complete European tour article please go to bgmc.org/news_europe2005.php).
BSR asked Smith to reflect on the events in Poland, now that over two years have passed. “It’s one of the two or three most exciting, most moving events of my life,” he said. “Going into Poland, we were naïve; we understood that it was a conservative country, but it had been so long since we had experienced such open conflict, that… it was like going in a time machine back 25 years, when people didn’t even know how to say the words. The reporters who were talking to us didn’t want to use the word “gay,” and one of their questions was “why do you need to have the word “Gay” in your name – why can’t you just be singers?” And we had to re-learn how to talk about the fact that being open about our sexual orientation was the reason that we did this.”
The chorus will next share its message of peace and inclusion at holiday concerts on December 7 and 8 in Jordan Hall. “Peace on Earth” is a musical tour around the world, celebrating the underlying concept of peace, and will range from an African drumming song (complete with drums) to “Oseh Shalom,” in Hebrew; Fauré’s “Cantique de Jean Racine (“the most sensuous piece of sacred music I’ve ever heard,” says Reynolds); “Stille Nacht” performed in German and American Sign Language by the entire chorus; and “Hymn to the Nativity” by David Conte, featuring soprano Natalie Polito*.
“This score was written about 20 years ago for the New York City Gay Men’s chorus and it uses texts from the Bible, telling the story of Christ’s birth and it intersperses this with the text of John Milton, and we have wonderful long sustained pedal tones with the chorus just singing “Peace,” under the soprano,” says Reynolds. “I’ve waited for years [to do this piece]. It requires a really high, light soprano and she [Polito] just walked in one day. It was originally scored for 28 instruments, and the composer’s re-scoring it for 9 for us.”
The chorus has commissioned over a dozen new works from composers such as David del Tredici, Daniel Pinkham, Conrad Susa, and Libby Larsen as well as Conte, and they have performed many local premieres of contemporary pieces.
“Because there is less music for men’s chorus than for traditional SATB chorus, we have a long tradition of commissioning music,” says Smith. “I’ve probably sung more than 25 new pieces during my time with the chorus. My personal favorite was a major work we did in the year 2000 by David Conte called “Eos.” [http://bgmc.org/recordings_eos.php] It’s a 40-minute choral symphony… one of the most exciting experiences I’ve had as a musician.
On April 5, the chorus will be doing two world premieres in Symphony Hall. The first is a joint commission, with three other chorus, by David del Tredici. With the working title The Gay Hosannas, it’s a four-movement piece set to the writing of four openly gay poets.
“It’s wild,” says Smith. “It’s wild musically in the way del Tredici is wild – as he matures he’s not being shy. It’s going to be great! The piece is supposed to arrive this month so we’ll see it shortly.”
Also on the program is a major work by Lowell Liebermann, set to Walt Whitman, with the working title O Democracy. “It’s really about the American instinct for liberty – Whitman wrote so much and so movingly about personal freedom and liberty. It’s a cantata format, a large-scale work.”
“Lowell Liebermann is an incredibly gifted young composer,” says Reynolds. “I first fell in love with his choral writing when I heard his 2nd Symphony. His music is neo-romantic – he wants to be able to connect with the audience. If they don’t have a reaction, it’s all for nothing.”
It’s not necessary to be gay to sing in the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus, although you do have to be a man! Auditions are held twice a year, in September and January, and do not require a prepared piece. The next auditions are on January 13. The roster currently has about 175 singers, all volunteers. About 140 – 150 singers perform in each subscription concert. For more information about the chorus and their upcoming concert, please visit http://bgmc.org.
UPCOMING BGMC 2007 -2008 CONCERTS:
"Peace on Earth, Holidays Around the World"
Friday, December 7, 8:00pm
Saturday, December 8, 3:00pm
Saturday, December 8, 8:00pm
New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall
"He Loves Me... He Loves Me NOT!"
Saturday, February 16, 7:00pm
Sunday, February 17, 5:00pm
Club Café, Boston
"Words and Music"
April 5, 8:30 PM
Symphony Hall, Boston
"Pride Concert: The Pink Carpet"
Thursday, June 5, 8:00pm
Friday, June 6, 8:00pm
Sunday, June 8, 7:00pm
The Cutler Majestic Theatre at Emerson College, Boston
For more information and tickets: http://www.bgmc.org
ABOUT THE WRITER
Sarah S. Brannen is the author and illustrator of Uncle Bobby's Wedding, a picture book for children, due out in March 2008 (G. P. Putnam's Sons). She also illustrated The ABC Book of American Homes by Michael Shoulders (July 2008, Charlesbridge Publishing). She writes frequently for Skating Magazine and illustrates for AppleSeeds and Cicada Magazines. She is the vice president of the New World Chorale, and was a member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for fifteen years. www.SarahBrannen.com
* Natalie Polito is a Boston Singers' Resource subscriber