By Mike Desmond

Everyone knows off-season conventions are an occasion, to party, to boogie across a dance floor.

Not always.

And that’s why Robert Strauss was managing a piano on a recent Sunday afternoon in the near-medieval surroundings of Buffalo’s Trinity Episcopal Church Christ Chapel.

Echoing off the stone walls and stained glass were the grand piano and dozens of singers in the higher octaves; membership in the choir isn’t dependent on gender identity.

Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus Funds Development Manager Andrew Carrow says the singers – members of a newly minted chorus which doesn’t even have a name yet – were there because of an off-season convention in Minneapolis last July.

It was the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA), which represents 12,000 singers across North and South America in more than 190 choruses.

Carrow says last year’s biennial convention wasn’t filled with just tenors and basses like the 50 from the BGMC.

There were choruses of many kinds and many voices.

Artistic Director Strauss says, “I was hearing music by groups made up of tenors and basses and made up of sopranos, altos, tenors and basses and groups of sopranos and altos like the ones we’ve started.”

He found it “so moving, so powerful.”

Strauss says Buffalo needs sopranos and altos singing for social justice.

“One of the things that Rob had come away with, and many of us were also inspired by, was just the amount of groups that were from the major cities that had a couple different choruses under their umbrella, where they had an upper voice chorus, and then a youth chorus,” said Carrow.

“And so, you know, many of us thought: ‘Well, why can’t Buffalo?’”

Now the early stages of a new chorus, many of them women, were echoing across Christ Chapel.

Strauss says there are many different levels of music knowledge in the singers who have joined in.

That may be why GALA wants to add collaborations between choruses and women and non-male composers.

Jess (who asked not to use their last name) says they a lot of musical experience and play instruments in bands.

“I’m here because I haven’t got many opportunities since I left high school to do singing and especially seeing that there is an inclusive group that I could do.”

The whole gender issue is in the background of the BGMC and the decision to start creating the new group.

That’s particularly true in the decision of the Catholic Diocese to push the group out of a planned choral appearance last year, with Holy Trinity Lutheran stepping in to provide a venue.

Carrow says “It was a disappointing thing to see. But, I think the community came around from it and we gained a lot of support. And, to see what happened at Holy Trinity, the outpouring of support for the community, it shows that it’s now how Buffalo feels.”

There’s a core problem, the decline of traditional choral groups like the choir of the church Carrow grew up in.

There‘s also the decline of music in many schools and school districts like Buffalo’s well-publicized music program problems.

Besides, when was the last time you heard a bunch of young males singing as they walked down the street, rather than show glazed-eyed looks at screens.

Strauss says there is a plan for a future youth chorus.

When you look across Christ Chapel it’s easy to realize how group-oriented choral music is, how it requires close massed voices to sing together and also break into alto ones and alto twos to sing separately, together to take notes on a music sheet and turn them into glorious music.

Looking back to his younger days in music, Strauss says soprano and alto choruses were among the first groups he ever worked with.

This is almost a boot camp of music feel for many of the participants, learning to sing, far from the shower.

For some, it’s group bonding.

Julie Durkin has lived locally for three years.

She’s active behind the scenes in theater.

“But I’ve always wanted to be able to participate more. So then, when I found this opening, I was so grateful. And, then to be able to sit next to somebody and blend with their voice, I can do that,” Durkin said.

Beside the theater community, Durkin wants to sing to represent her gay community, explaining “Increasing my singing capacity, increase my … my courage. You know, as a new person in this area, as a new person in this community and get to be out there a little more. Make a statement, too.”

As the director of a group called the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus, Strauss is well-aware of those social currents:

“There are lots of sopranos and altos, sopranos,  mezzos and altos, you know all, all across the gender spectrum, all across the sexual orientation. You don’t have to be any one thing to be part of this group. But the message is going to be pro-LGBTQIA, plus the message is going to be pro-women’s rights, it’s going to be pro-trans rights. It’s going to be that even though in this room, we’re not all women in this room. We’re not all one thing or another. I think that’s exciting too.”

---

The new chorus will have its first public performances with the BGMC May 17 in Lafayette Presbyterian Church and May 18 in University Presbyterian Church.