Gay Gotham Chorus
honest singing

The Pride concert program consisted entirely of compositions by gay composers or writers. The program notes were virtually a masters dissertation extract of delicious details and discreetly delicate dirt about the out-gay lives of the composers, researched and written by Gay Gotham Chorus’ distinguished music director Jonathan Babcock. Who knew that Samuel Barber had a decades long relationship with Gian-Carlo Menotti, whom he met at school at the Curtis Institute of Music in 1928 Philadelphia? This is the stuff of gay-opera-dreams. Francis Poulenc a composer of devoutly pious music, Babcock notes, was openly out in wartime Paris practically being an early activist of humble honesty about his lifestyle. Benjamin Britten, who wrote opera roles for his lover Peter Pears, of course, we all know about. But, unless one has read the autobiographical works of Ned Rorem, or the chorus’ program notes, one would be unlikely to know the name of Rorem’s long time lover James Holmes (also a musician). Leonard Bernstein, who came out late in life following Stonewall, was described as closeted of necessity but having an illustrious circle of gay musical friends including Virgil Thomson, Britten, Barber and Menotti, David Diamond, Rorem, and Aaron Copland. Copland’s quiet calm life as a gay man is described in quotes from two of his lovers, music critic Paul Moor and Erik Johns. By the time Bernstein urged Copland to come out after Stonewall, the program notes, Copland was well on in years and had said, "I’ll leave that to you, boy." Imagine, only an eminent gay mate the likes of Copland could have called Bernstein ‘boy.’ Oh, to have been just a twink amidst these great gay men, even once, would have made the memory of a lifetime.

The thirty members of the Gotham Gay Chorus appeared in black tuxedos around a gorgeous grand piano in the somewhat stark chancel of the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew at 86^th Street and West End Avenue. Although each one’s lapel was discreetly festooned with a de rigueur rhinestone AIDS ribbon, these boys could certainly use some glitter. But the full house of aficionados heartily applauded their much awaited entrance, even before they began to sing.

They began with the concert’s title piece, A Jubilant Song, by Norman Dello Joio, with text from A Song of Joys by gay poet Walt Whitman (who, we are told, was noted by cognoscenti for his advocacy of sexual democracy). It was also noted that the composer, Dello Joio, is both an organist and straight, an unusual but not unheard of juxtaposition. First, there was a dramatic reading of Whitman’s poem; then the song with a moving solo by Brian Bumby.

There followed songs by Barber, Mulholland, and Britten which, for me, portrayed the distinct sound of this chorus. The sound has two stylistic elements which I would call Gay Lilt and Gay Pride. The first is a tone of voice that is ‘confidently free’ but at the same time is profoundly sad in a memorial sort of way, which persistently pulls one’s heart strings. The latter is a rising voice with subtle hints of restrained joy which might best be described as ‘Gay Pride’ voicing. This unique sound, used by groups such as the Seattle Men’s Chorus and in earlier years by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus before they began to intentionally mainstream their image, is perhaps the inspirational voice of the gay choir movement. It is the personified sound of North American SING-OUT! groups across the U.S. and Canada. It is a sound that gives me glad goose bumps but also always brings tears to my eyes, from the haunting sadness, which intentionally reminds us of all those we have lost to AIDS. When I asked the group’s founder for the right term for this sound, he paused and called it an ‘honest’ sound. This was the second time in a week that I had heard OUT musicologists use that word to describe gay music. It is perhaps a generic term, but it seems to be the word that gives the meaning of the openness that defines music by and for glbt ears in the current era of our times.

Poulenc’s Laudes de Saint Antoine de Padoue, I. O Jesu, and IV. Si Queaeis, sung in Latin, made magnificently clear why this group is also the Men’s Chorus in Residence at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew.

Bernstein’s Dream With Me was sung by the chorus’ pull-up group led by Danton Bankey. This lovely arrangement, by Larry Moore, was pure early 1950s harmonizing bringing fond smiles to the faces of the audience made up of so many middle-aged men and gay male couples.

The Aaron Copland finale of three songs, I Bought Me a Cat, At the River, and Ching-A-Ring-Chaw, brought forth the rousing sound of pride which was the theme of this Pride month concert.