Ah, Sunday
Jun. 21st, 2010 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bjarvisSunday was busy. Not as busy as Saturday fortunately but it was active.
In the late morning, we headed to Baltimore for their pride festival in Druid Hill Park. I like Baltimore's pride festival a lot: it's community-based, set in a fantastic park and is a friendly, social environment. Too many other city festivals have become out-of-control huge, expensive, corporate and generic. I'll stick with Baltimore's format, thank you very much.
We had a good time visiting with various friends, enjoying some food & drinks and generally lazing about as we had no work commitments this year. Ah, what a change for us!
By 2pm, we were on the road for home, enjoyed a quick nap and were off again to the final concert of the Lesbian & Gay Chorus of Washington DC. After 26 years, the LGCW has collectively decided to wind down their affairs. I've heard that it's been too difficult and expensive in recent years to keep & build an audience, a roster of singers and a slate of sponsors & advertisers all while paying for concert & rehearsal space, music and such.
I've had limited contact with any chorus for at least five years now. Choral music never was my thing but it was a way of being a productive individual within a community of volunteers for a worthy cause. When I started with the Toronto Gay Men's Chorus in 1990 or so, there was a great and vital need for any openly gay performance groups to provide a focus for the LGBT community, to provide a gentle path for those just coming out and to act as a political force against anti-gay bigotry. Over the past 20+ years, I think purposes #1 and #3 have faded off; while providing a path to coming to grips with being gay is still worthwhile for many, the LGBT choruses are not the only venue as they used to be. In short, I'm inclined to think these days that the entire gay choral movement has largely run its course --ironically, by succeeding at its goals. The LGCW is now done because, well, it's largely succeeded at its stated goals and now is the right time to bring it to a close.
There were 21 singers on stage with guest appearances by Not What You Think, Nuance, Nan Raphael and Suede. LGCW alumni in the audience were invited onstage for the final number, effectively transferring 50% of the audience to the stage.
It was much like many prior LGCW concerts in the past --which might go a long way to explaining the dwindling audience. When I left the concert, the only tune I could remember and/or hum wasn't sung by the chorus but by one of the invited ensembles. The chorus has been good at singing but kinda sucked at entertaining. I'm delighted they're musically & vocally skilled but do they seriously want to compete against the vast number of big-name professional choruses in their particular field of artistry? If I wanted unsingable artsy-fartsy high concept music, there are larger groups performing in superior venues with better acoustics.
There was a commissioned piece included in the program. IMHO, less than 10% of all commissioned works actually are worth the paper they're written on. Yes, it's important to commission new works otherwise we'd never get even the few gems which are occasionally produced. Yes, having paid for it, one should probably actually perform it at least once. But there's no reason at all to bring mediocre pieces back for a second run: if it sucked in the first run, let it die a deserved death in a filing cabinet. I'm sure a number of music professors could analyze the selection and demonstrate how sublimely beautiful it is, but if the audience's attention is drifting, what does that say about the product?
BTW, if you have only 21 singers, there should be time enough to work on diction. And if they're not strong enough to make themselves heard over the piano, then have the piano cut back a little. Think chamber music rather than Wagner's ring cycle: subtlety and gentleness should be one's watchwords.
And can everyone please just put "Everything Possible" into stasis for a few decades. It lost its charm after the first 15,821 concert performances. Let go of it for a generation or so.
After the concert and reception, we dined at Mr Henry's down the street with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
markgarciachris and timcub. Much food and hilarity ensued... we gotta do this again some time soon!
And no evening would be complete without some form of dessert so we cut through Bethesda on the way home to enjoy gelato at a shop we had noticed last month. I had a lime gelato that made my tongue curl in ecstasy... heartily recommended!
In the late morning, we headed to Baltimore for their pride festival in Druid Hill Park. I like Baltimore's pride festival a lot: it's community-based, set in a fantastic park and is a friendly, social environment. Too many other city festivals have become out-of-control huge, expensive, corporate and generic. I'll stick with Baltimore's format, thank you very much.
We had a good time visiting with various friends, enjoying some food & drinks and generally lazing about as we had no work commitments this year. Ah, what a change for us!
By 2pm, we were on the road for home, enjoyed a quick nap and were off again to the final concert of the Lesbian & Gay Chorus of Washington DC. After 26 years, the LGCW has collectively decided to wind down their affairs. I've heard that it's been too difficult and expensive in recent years to keep & build an audience, a roster of singers and a slate of sponsors & advertisers all while paying for concert & rehearsal space, music and such.
I've had limited contact with any chorus for at least five years now. Choral music never was my thing but it was a way of being a productive individual within a community of volunteers for a worthy cause. When I started with the Toronto Gay Men's Chorus in 1990 or so, there was a great and vital need for any openly gay performance groups to provide a focus for the LGBT community, to provide a gentle path for those just coming out and to act as a political force against anti-gay bigotry. Over the past 20+ years, I think purposes #1 and #3 have faded off; while providing a path to coming to grips with being gay is still worthwhile for many, the LGBT choruses are not the only venue as they used to be. In short, I'm inclined to think these days that the entire gay choral movement has largely run its course --ironically, by succeeding at its goals. The LGCW is now done because, well, it's largely succeeded at its stated goals and now is the right time to bring it to a close.
There were 21 singers on stage with guest appearances by Not What You Think, Nuance, Nan Raphael and Suede. LGCW alumni in the audience were invited onstage for the final number, effectively transferring 50% of the audience to the stage.
It was much like many prior LGCW concerts in the past --which might go a long way to explaining the dwindling audience. When I left the concert, the only tune I could remember and/or hum wasn't sung by the chorus but by one of the invited ensembles. The chorus has been good at singing but kinda sucked at entertaining. I'm delighted they're musically & vocally skilled but do they seriously want to compete against the vast number of big-name professional choruses in their particular field of artistry? If I wanted unsingable artsy-fartsy high concept music, there are larger groups performing in superior venues with better acoustics.
There was a commissioned piece included in the program. IMHO, less than 10% of all commissioned works actually are worth the paper they're written on. Yes, it's important to commission new works otherwise we'd never get even the few gems which are occasionally produced. Yes, having paid for it, one should probably actually perform it at least once. But there's no reason at all to bring mediocre pieces back for a second run: if it sucked in the first run, let it die a deserved death in a filing cabinet. I'm sure a number of music professors could analyze the selection and demonstrate how sublimely beautiful it is, but if the audience's attention is drifting, what does that say about the product?
BTW, if you have only 21 singers, there should be time enough to work on diction. And if they're not strong enough to make themselves heard over the piano, then have the piano cut back a little. Think chamber music rather than Wagner's ring cycle: subtlety and gentleness should be one's watchwords.
And can everyone please just put "Everything Possible" into stasis for a few decades. It lost its charm after the first 15,821 concert performances. Let go of it for a generation or so.
After the concert and reception, we dined at Mr Henry's down the street with
markgarciachris and timcub. Much food and hilarity ensued... we gotta do this again some time soon!And no evening would be complete without some form of dessert so we cut through Bethesda on the way home to enjoy gelato at a shop we had noticed last month. I had a lime gelato that made my tongue curl in ecstasy... heartily recommended!
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-21 08:23 pm (UTC)Yes, please. That was our NMGMC encore for several years. I was dead tired of it as a singer. After the new chorus director came aboard 3 years ago, he chose some other songs for encore use.
Then he went to GALA and found out about "Everthing Possible." Thinking it was new and fresh and exciting, he brought it to the chorus not knowing that we had already done it to death. I don't think it made it onto the program!
But what did they end the concert with recently as an encore?
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow"