Carmina: Gay Men’s Chorus

The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC (GMCW) commemorates its milestone 35^thanniversary with Carmina 35 at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall onSunday, May 8, 2016 at 8 p.m., under the direction of Artistic Director Thea Kano. For more information, visit www.GMCW.org.

GMCW partners with New York’s Gallim Dance and 40 members of the New York City Master Chorale to perform a perennial favorite of classical music, Carl Orff’s canonical Carmina Burana. Soloists lending their talent to this performance are soprano Paige Cutrona, tenor Robert Baker, and baritone Young Kwang Yoo. The performance will also feature new choreography by the industrious Andrea Miller, Artistic Director for Gallim Dance.

A leading contemporary dance company based in New York, this collaboration complements the ethos of Gallim Dance, which celebrates the human spirit through works deeply rooted in the human experience of love, struggle and spirituality. Miller created a loose narrative for nine dancers, harnessing the passion and physicality that the music inspires to explore different relationships—same sex and heterosexual, romantic, platonic, and familial. She channels a spectrum of emotions—passion, sexuality, tension, struggle, joy—through characteristically big, bold movement.

This production of Carmina Burana will also be performed at Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

Orff’s sweeping masterwork is paired with touchstones from GMCW’s history. The second half of the concert will be bookended with significant works commissioned by GMCW— “Build A House” fromAlexander’s House and “This House Shall Stand” from Songs of My Family. The Chorus will also perform favorite selections from past concerts, as well as “This Train,” the first song rehearsed at GMCW’s inaugural rehearsal in 1981, GMCW’s anthem “Make Them Hear You” from Broadway’s Ragtime, and “We Kiss in Shadow,” performed by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus at the Kennedy Center in 1980, which served as the inspiration to start a DC-based gay men’s chorus.

Historical significance

A torchbearer and consistent, unified voice for equality, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC has been a steady presence in its community and at historic events that have impacted LGBT people. In 2013, GMCW sang on the steps of the Supreme Court when the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down, and returned in 2015 to sing jubilantly when the court ruled in favor of marriage equality. That same year, GMCW was the first LGBT chorus invited to perform in Cuba on a 10-day cultural and educational tour, helping to spread awareness about equality. The chorus sang at the Lincoln Memorial in 2008 for the first inauguration of President Barack Obama, performing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” with Josh Groban and Heather Headley. Additionally, GMCW vocal ensemble Potomac Fever performed at the White House in 2012 for the first-ever LGBT reception honoring rising LGBT leaders.

The chorus has grown from 90 members in its first season to more than 200 singing members today, educating and entertaining more than 10,000 patrons annually.