I'm ashamed to admit that I was initially disappointed when I saw that GALA Choruses (The Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses) was taking over the entire Denver Performing Arts Complex for its quadrennial international choral festival recently held July 7-11 in Colorado.
Since I was headed to the Mile High City to perform as a member of the Windy City Gay Chorus, I was also hoping that I might be able to catch some world-class theater, opera or ballet at the nation's second-largest performing arts complex at the same time.
However, the Denver Performing Arts Complex's 2,362—seat Boettcher Concert Hall (where the Colorado Symphony performs), the 2,100—seat Ellie Caulkins Opera House (where Opera Colorado and Colorado Ballet perform), the 2,882—seat Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre (where national Broadway touring companies typically play) and the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex (where the Tony Award-winning Denver Center Theatre Company is housed) were all taken up by GALA programming for 45 ensembles, 130 choirs, 200 performances and more than 6,100 delegates.
I'm happy to say that my initial disappointment instantly faded away once the GALA Festival got underway, since it was such a positive and creatively enriching experience to see so many LGBTA choral ensembles and troupes from around the globe share their artistry and differing approaches to choral performing.
GALA's second appearance in Denver (the first being 1992) marked the largest gathering yet for the world's largest gay and lesbian choral event, which has also been staged in Minneapolis (1986), Seattle (1989), Tampa (1996), San Jose, Calif. (2000), Montreal (2004) and Miami (2008). Yet GALA traces its origins to Chicago in 1981, when delegates from LGBTA choruses met to plan out future festivals in San Francisco in 1982 and in New York in 1983 (when GALA was initially known as COAST—Come Out And Sing Together).
So it's important to note that Chicago choruses had a strong showing in Denver.
Windy City Performing Arts, the umbrella organization for both Aria and Windy City Gay Chorus, garnered more than 55 members to perform separately and in combined numbers led by artistic director and GALA board member Stephen C. Edwards. Chicago Gay Men's Chorus performed with 105 members in attendance under the artistic direction of Patrick Sinozich, while two delegates from the Chicago lesbian feminist chorus Artemis Singers were in attendance to promote partnerships with the Sister Singers Network.
Sinozich, attending his sixth GALA, particularly enjoyed having the festival in Denver, thanks to its world-class performing venues all located in such close proximity to each other. He also saw two distinct focuses running throughout the 2012 festival.
"One of the themes I noticed was GALA looking back at itself and its 30-year history," said Sinozich, noting how much was made of looking back at commissioned works presented at GALA via events like the Our Legacy = Our Song concert which was co-hosted by sex advice columnist Dan Savage and performer Vanessa German. Sinozich also saw a trend of other choruses looking back at their own histories, like the Twin Cities Gay Chorus' concert "Out of My Range "and Portland Gay Men's Chorus' "The Young Person's Guide to the Gay Men's Chorus."
"I also saw a focus on youth with the number of youth choruses that were there, the big performance that they gave [called Youth Invasion] and that they were included in the Big Gay Sing sing-along concerts," Sinozich said.
Indeed, one of the most touching moments of the whole GALA festival occurred at the Youth Invasion concert when six young members of Kansas City-based PerformOUTKC started singing "We Shall Overcome" and were instantly joined by the entire Caulkins Opera House audience as it sang support.
Another touching performance came with GALA's first-ever HIV-positive chorus, which was made up of members from various GALA choruses performing the number "Give Us a Death Undiminished" from the 1992 work Hidden Legacies as part of the Our Legacy = Our Song concert, which touched upon how AIDS affected so many members of GALA choruses.
Robert Basile, a charter member of Windy City Gay Chorus since its founding in 1979, said he participated in GALA's HIV-positive chorus because "it's important to tell our story."
"I wanted to be part of it because I am HIV-positive and I stand up to that fact," Basile said. "I've lived through the crisis and I want to be a mentor for other people who can hopefully learn from what I've experienced."
Now for all the positives of a GALA festival in terms of sharing artistic ideas among LGBTQA choruses, there are some drawbacks. No one person can experience all the choruses since upwards of three or four might be scheduled to perform at the exact same time. And if one decides to solely focus on seeing choruses, it leaves very little time to do outside sight-seeing (which was a quibble of Chicago Gay Men's Chorus member Larry Olson, who was seen meticulously taking notes in his thick GALA program book at each chorus performance he attended).
"There was definitely so much going on that I couldn't see all of it and you do get kind of burnt out after seeing so many choruses in a row," said Aria member Anna Rose Epstein, who made her first-time GALA festival visit into a summer vacation alongside her wife, Hannah Michaelson.
"One of the things that I enjoyed most was the bonding experience," Epstein said. "Even though we all sing together as choruses, we don't necessarily get a lot of time to hang out and talk together—so we all really bonded and we all want to sing together even more."
For more information on GALA, visit www.galachoruses.org .
