The Grand Finale

Wednesday, July 11, 2012--Denver

It was the last day of the GALA Festival.  I have to admit that I approached the day being glad of that.  It's exhausting going to so many concerts day after day.  I've enjoyed them so much, but enough is enough!!  As with the other days, the performances today had their ups and downs.  And all the performances have given me a chance to think about how different choirs have different "personalities."  Their approaches to shows vary so much.  And it has nothing to do with the size of the groups.  Even within the biggest, best choirs, the variances are great.  That was seen just in today's performances.

I didn't keep notes as detailed as I did the last two days, partially because some of the performances weren't that good and partially because some of the better performances were built around themes rather than having a wide variety of types of music.  Here's what I saw today:

Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus (Minneapolis/St. Paul)--Their performance was more of a musical theater piece than a concert.  Entitled Out of My Range (and Other Age-Related Performance Issues), it covered topics such as Auditions, Warmups, Ode to My Twenties, Like-Minded People, The Monthly Social, etc.  It was very professionally and beautifully performed.  Of course, they had the ideal audience for it, and the audience roared over and over and they identified with what was being sung/performed.  Click here for some of their videos.

Cantaria--The Gay Men's Chorus of Asheville--This was a small group with a mellow sound.  Click here for some of their videos.

San Diego Women's Chorus--This is a non-auditioned chorus that includes gay-friendly women who like to sing as well as lesbians.  It was a simple, entertaining concert.  Click here for some of their videos.

Turtle Creek Chorale (Dallas)--This is the large group (versus the chamber group that performed yesterday).  Although the chorale has 250 members, only a little less than half of them made it to GALA to perform.  Although some of the music was lighter (Being Alive and This Is the Moment), this group stayed closer to "classical" music and had the same demeanor as the chamber group--serious demeanor, no embellishment of songs, and with an emphasis on the quality of the sound (which was great).  It is the most conservative of all the choirs I have seen (not just in performance but also in dress with their 3-piece suits) and was the least entertaining of all of them as far as I am concerned.  Click here for some of their videos.

Colla Voce (San Francisco)--A small men's group that sings mostly show tunes.  Click here for some of their videos.

New Orlean's Gay Men's Chorus--This group came out with pink feathers attached to their lapels by rhinestone broaches.  They sang mostly bold, exciting songs--La Vida Loca, Material Girl, Do You Believe in Life after Love?, etc.  Click here for some of their videos.

Southwest Florida Gay and Lesbian Chorus (Cape Coral)--This small ensemble sang Cole Porter songs.  They made a great effort, but had too much movement during the songs and suffered from some weak voices.  But with their weaknesses, they sang their hearts out!  Click here for a couple of their videos.

One Voice Chorus (Charlotte, NC)--This was a smaller group with a nice sound.  They sang The Letter, a new piece of work utilizing the words from suicide notes left by troubled youth and also letters written by mothers of those who had died.  It was quite beautiful and moving.  They had a soloist sing Light of a Clear Blue Morning who was so outstanding that she actually got TWO standing ovations.  Because the concert is limited to 30 minutes, the conductor had to turn to the audience and use his baton to cut them off so they could go to their next piece which was the exotic sounding (and wonderfully performed) Desh.  This group who most people were hearing only to be sure they would have a seat for the next choir's performance wowed the audience and got as good a response and all the big, well-known groups did.  Click here for some of their videos.

San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus--This was the largest group to perform with probably 200+ singers on the stage.  Their program was entitled Enchantingly Wicked and consisted of songs with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz from his two musicals Godspell and Wicked.  A surprise of the performance was a personal appearance by Schwartz himself playing the piano and singing a new song entitled Testimony which he has written as a part of the It Get's Better campaign.  In contrast to Dallas, this group was more casual, but with perfect quality sound.  They had some group choreography even though they were formally attired in tails.  They got the longest standing ovation of the performances I saw at the festival.  Click here for LOTS of their videos.

Now that the festival is over, I wonder what I missed?  As I wrote before, I have seen maybe 40% of the performances.  Surely some of the ones I missed were among the great ones and I don't even know it.  GALA has recorded everything and will have the performances available for download in mp3 format (at a cost) starting around Sept. 1 at http://www.galachoruses.org.


Somewhat related to that, one feature of the festival that I haven't mentioned is that there were a series of commissioned short compositions/chants which could be sung in the round.  About 8 minutes before the start of a new set of concerts, the composer and a conductor of a chorus would come onto the stage and teach the piece to the audience.  We would be separated into groups, then, and we would sing it in the round.  It was quite fun, and these compositions are available for download at the GALA website.  They could be fun for a party activity or for choruses to use with audiences while they wait for a performance to begin.  Here's the link for the download:  http://galachoruses.org/artistic-directors/rounds

Steps Walked:  10,576