Windy City Gay Chorus ( WCGC ) and Windy City Treble Quire ( WCTQ ) will deliver an evening of meaningful musical messages as they present "Legacies of Hope" on March 21 at St. James Episcopal Cathedral, 65 E. Huron St.
"Legacies of Hope" sets out to honor the lives of at-risk LGBTQ youth. In doing so, it will also serve as the stage of the Midwest premiere of "Tyler's Suite." The music will commemorate Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University student and classical violinist who took his own life after being cyberbullied for being gay.
"We're committed to telling stories that should never be forgotten because we're singers, we tell those stories through song because song is what touches us and moves us and songs are what our audiences come to hear," said Windy City Performing Arts ( WCPA ) Artistic Director Paul Caldwell of the group's mission. "The other thing is we feel it's important to have arts groups in the city who make thoughtful commentary on the gay experience."
WCTQ's performance will set up the program framing the issue of what it means socially and emotionally to be an at risk youth. The music is inspired by the stories of other youth around the world whose experience of prejudice also had a hand in creating in social change. Caldwell composed and arranged the music, along with his collaborator Sean Ivory. The stories within the music are of LGBTQ people in the Holocaust, the children who initiated the Soweto Uprisings, and a young girl who survived the Rwandan genocide.
WCGC will present "Tyler's Suite." The original, multi-movement work was curated by Stephen Schwartz and created by top American composers of this century he selected. Set to lyrics by Pamela Stewart with sections by Schwartz, John Bucchino, Ann Hampton Callaway, Craig Carnelia, Nolan Gasser, Jake Heggie, John Corigliano and Lance Horne, "Tyler's Suite" points out the impact and consequences of bullying and particularly represents the stories of Tyler's life and relationship with his family.
"For that to happen to a brilliant young musician, it resonates particularly loudly with other musicians and it also begs for the story to be told through music," said Caldwell. "The story touched all of us so deeply as individuals. The violin part in this piece is in the scope of a concerto. It's extremely difficult and extremely important."
Windy City Performing Arts in collaboration with the Tyler Clementi Foundation, co-commissioned "Tyler's Suite" with six of the country's other leading gay choruses, including San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles, New York City Gay Men's Chorus, San Diego Men's Chorus, Turtle Creek Chorale/Dallas and Seattle Men's Chorus. Each group will have its own concert in their respective locations. Caldwell details the music as being bittersweet, inspiring and rousing.
"In many respects, the whole point of the piece is that we're trying to paint a picture to make sure that no kid ends up alone on a bridge again or feeling so alone that they think the only way out of the pain is to go off a bridge," said Caldwell.
"It is very moving and it does definitely speak to my heart and it is a piece of hope, but it brings me to a place of sadness because it brings me back to September 2010," said Jane Clementi, Tyler's mother and co-founder of the Tyler Clementi Foundation. "One of the reasons we agreed to it ["Tyler's Suite" performance] in the beginning because that's all people did know of Tyler was the headline, '18-year-old gay student from Rutgers dies by suicide.' One of the movements is about him playing his violin when he was 10 or 11 years old while he rode his unicycle. It's a light, playful and uplifting kind of piece. That's something I think many people do not know about Tyler. He did have a passion for music and a love for music and I do think music could change hearts and minds."
Caldwell said he feels strongly about this performance, saying Tyler's account had an impact. Years ago, Caldwell remembered keeping a line between his professional life and personal life. While he was an out gay man, he chose to keep quiet about his orientation at work. Upon hearing of Tyler's death in 2010 he realized while youth are dying, he was not speaking up, which led him to be more vocal about being part of the LBTQ community.
"I absolutely made huge life changes upon hearing about this story and so to be standing in a big venue in downtown Chicago telling the story with a large group of LGBTQ singers and with Tyler's mother in the room in front of an audience, it represents a seismic shift for me personally," Caldwell said.
Jane will also be in attendance at the Chicago performance, when she will speak on behalf of the Tyler Clementi Foundation. A New Jersey resident, Jane travels to speak at various venues in support of LGBT rights and the need for families and communities to embrace LGBT populations. The primary focus of the foundation, she added, is on ending online and offline bullying. This musical performance, she said, is the first of its kind to be written for Tyler. The foundation supports the event, which offers another platform to continue the conversation.
"It's really been my passion now to make sure that we continue the conversations that were started and we continue to work toward the fact that there won't be any other Tylers and that the pain that he had to feel at that dark place and the pain we all felt after that, that no other family will have to experience that and no other child will be confronted with that thought of life or not," Jane said.
For more information, or to purchase tickets for this March 21 event, visit www.tylerclementi.org/ and windycitysings.org/ .