Distinguished Service Award to Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, DC

Presented by GLAA Secretary Barrett L. Brick

GLAA 32nd Anniversary Reception
Radisson Barcelo Hotel
Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Now in its twenty-second season, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, DC was founded on June 28, 1981, ten days after the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus sang in the Kennedy Center on its historic national tour, a night I well remember. Twenty years later, the men of GMCW had the pleasure of hosting their brothers from San Francisco in an anniversary concert in the beautifully renovated - and acoustically improved -- Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

It is perhaps not surprising that our city's premiere concert venue should have hosted so many occasions in the Chorus' life. Last December, this 160-member chorus took the stage next door to the Concert Hall, in the Kennedy Center Opera House, to pay tribute to Elizabeth Taylor as part of the Kennedy Center Honors. What President and Mrs. Bush learned that night, along with millions of Americans when the show was broadcast later that month, is something many of us have known for years: the Gay Men's Chorus is something of which all Washingtonians can be proud.

GMCW has graced many stages in town besides the Kennedy Center, from Lisner Auditorium at GWU to the Lincoln Theater, Constitution Hall, and innumerable church sanctuaries. They have taken their show on the road to six GALA Choruses festivals; to the Scandinavian capitals; to New York City's Avery Fisher, Alice Tully, and Carnegie Halls; and to many other North American cities, including Boston, Miami, Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle, Vancouver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. And it's been my personal privilege to see them perform in several of those cities, to great acclaim.

GMCW has presented a wide range of entertainments from classical recitals to "Pirates of Penzance." It has released several CD recordings, and has been honored with the 1989 Mayor's Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline, the 1995 Washington Area Music Association Award - the WAMMIE -- for Outstanding Gospel/Inspirational Performance, and several grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Most recently, the Chorus was honored with the 2002 WAMMIE Award for Best Recording, for the CD "I Dream of a Time," jointly recorded with the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus.

GMCW's community outreach has included the Washington Cathedral's Episcopal Caring Response to AIDS service; Family and Friends Night at Bet Mishpachah; the Atlantic States Gay Rodeo; the Kennedy Center Open House; the Mautner project; Monday Night At The National Theatre; Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday celebrations; One in Ten; benefit concerts for Wolf Trap and the Whitman-Walker Clinic; and banquets for the Human Rights Campaign, PFLAG, and the National Hospice Association. The Chorus' special ensembles, such as Potomac Fever and the Rock Creek Singers, have brought magic to many other events. The GMCW Players have presented several theatrical productions.

We are proud to note that GMCW's first public performance, in September 1981, was at the District Building for the installation of former GAA President Mel Boozer as head of the Washington office of the National Gay Task Force (as it was then known). Since then, the Chorus has performed for the inaugurations of a mayor and a president, has sung from the steps of the DC Eagle to the steps of the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, and at numerous Pride Day stages and AIDS Memorial Quilt venues. The Chorus also produced a music festival to coincide with the 1993 March on Washington, and has commissioned new compositions and arrangements from many distinguished musicians, enriching the cultural record of our time.

As we in GLAA have worked the halls of government for our community, the Gay Men's Chorus has worked music halls as cultural ambassadors. With a gutsy performance of "Walk Him Up the Stairs" before an initially hostile crowd at the National Theatre, or forming a "flying wedge" of the Major General's daughters dancing across the stage at Lisner, or singing "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" and blowing kisses back to Liz Taylor on national television -- in those moments and many more, these men with their voices and their showmanship have won hearts in ways that no piece of legislation or executive order ever could.

As an honorary chorus member myself since 1984, it is my great honor, on behalf of GLAA, to present this Distinguished Service Award to the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, DC.