"For A Look or A Touch" :: Reuben M. Reynolds on the BGMC's Spring Concert and the Powerful Piece at Its Center

This year marks the 30th Anniversary Season of the Boston Gay Men's Chorus, a group that has moved and entertained audiences in Beantown, performed outreach concerts in cities around Massachusetts, and even traveled abroad, singing in Poland some years ago--where the Chorus was met by both appreciative listeners and anti-gay protesters.

The group's longtime music director, Reuben M. Reynolds III, has seen his share of the drama, having been with the Chorus for just under half its three-decade existence.

"This is my 13th year," Reynolds told EDGE during a recent interview. Before that, "I was in Kansas City, where I spent nine years at the Heartland Men's Chorus." Added the music director, "I'm a professional homosexual, as my mother calls it."

The Chorus seeks to promote a more just society through the power of music, and though they might perform three concerts per season in formal attire, the group of about 150 singing members (plus a small, dedicated cadre of "fifth section" support members who work behind the scenes) don't limit their repertoire to chamber music or classical compositions sung in foreign languages. The Chorus is as much a part of the times as the audiences with which it connects; among other selections, this year's Spring Concert is set to feature work by pop artist Adele, openly gay singer Ricky Martin (with lyrics delivered in Spanish), a medley of Gershwin tunes assembled by Chorus arranger and accompanist Chad Weirick, and a selection from the gay musical "Falsettoland," a tender, happy tune about being in love called "What More Can I Say."

The BGMC also commissions original work, such as the powerful piece that is scheduled to comprise much of the concert's second act, Jake Heggie's "For A Look or A Touch," co-commissioned with the Seattle Men's Chorus and originally intended for last year's Spring Concert. Seattle premiered the piece, but Boston's chorus held back; Reynolds explained why.

"We were scheduled to do the piece," the conductor recalled, "but at retreat last year, when the 'It Gets Better' campaign had just started and was getting a lot of attention, we were talking with a bunch of the guys and started thinking about what we could do and how we could get involved. There was a very strong feeling amongst the chorus members that they wanted to do something more than just make a video.

"So we changed our concert last year to tell the story of a young man who had committed suicide because he couldn't come to grips with being gay, and the public's response to it [by performing Jay Kawarsky's 'Prayers for Bobby']. It's really the story of his mother and how she came to recognize that she had been part of the problem. She became one of the biggest supporters and advocates for gay rights in the country.

"It was quite wonderful," Reynolds continued. "We had young people who had come to grips with [being gay or lesbian] speaking from the stage to tell us their stories; we had five different GSAs (gay-straight alliances) attending and listening. It was a really, really important thing to do at that time, and even though we had commissioned ["For A Look or a Touch"] and were dying to do it, we put it off. You have to go with what strikes your heart at that very moment, and it was just so important to tell that story and not wait a year to do it. But at the same time, we're ecstatic to be back to the piece now."

EDGE's correspondent, who happens to be a singing member with the Chorus, agreed that "For A Look or A Touch" is a powerful piece, but then wondered how the Chorus would get through it without literally choking up.

Reynolds gave a laugh. "I had a teacher one time, a soprano who sang at the Metropolitan Opera. A wonderful lady. She would always tell me, 'You have to go too far in rehearsal. You have to get your crying done in rehearsal, so that when you walk out on that stage you're there to make other people cry, not cry yourself.' "

Reynolds went on to address the question of what brought the two choruses to the decision to co-commission a piece about male lovers facing the horrors of the Holocaust.

"It's a story that's never really been looked at," Reynolds mused. "We look so much at the Jewish experience during the Holocaust, and this is a story that hasn't been told yet. Even at that, this is a Jewish couple who happen to be gay.

"Very often, what we do with the Boston Gay Men's Chorus is that it's all about telling our story," Reynolds added. "And we have so many different stories to be told, and we can learn something from all of them rather than just repeating the same thing over and over and over.

"But the wider thing about this that it isn't so much about the Holocaust, but about two people who were in love and about how that love was taken away from them. It's really a huge love story--the theme of the whole thing is falling in love again, and not being afraid to fall in love."

The work is based on the diary of Manfred Lewin, a gay Jew who gave up a chance to escape the Nazi death camps in order to stay with his family. Though Lewin did not survive, his lover, Gad Beck, did; however, it fell to Beck to wrestle with the burden of being a survivor whose story no one seemed interested in hearing. In "For A Look or A Touch," Lewin's ghost, still resembling the young man Beck knew long ago, visits the now-aged survivor. The dramatic story of their separation is recounted, but at the same time their love rekindles.

The lessons of history are hard to hold on to, and for any minority group the uncomfortable truth that justice and equality hinge, at best, on judicial and legislative trends and, at worst, on the whim of the majority... if not outright mob rule. The horrors of the Holocaust may seem like a distant memory, and recent years have seen remarkable strides for the GLBT community, but does that mean that things truly are getting better, in an enduring and substantial sense, for gay people and their families?

"I don't know that things ever get better," Reynolds told EDGE. "We keep trying. Washington State just passed marriage equality, and New Jersey also has, though the governor is going to veto it supposedly. We keep making progress, we keep educating ourselves."

One of the ways in which the Chorus promotes progress and education is to perform a number of outreach concerts every year, usually at schools in towns around the state. Again and again, the feedback that the Chorus receives about these outreach concerts is that they speak directly to gay teens who may feel isolated and afraid. From time to time, those same gay teens grow up to join the Chorus themselves and reach out to GLBT kids in their turn.

The Chorus is slated to perform in Rockland this weekend, previewing for the audience at the First Congregational Church songs from the concerts that the full Chorus will perform later this month in Boston. Reynolds related an especially striking recent example of how the outreach concerts make a discernible impact.

"This past November we sang in Groton, and it was a little bitty church that wanted us to come sing, and then they decided, 'No, how can we do something that will make a real difference on our community and something that will really help the schools fight bullying?' " Reynolds recounted. "So this little bitty church contact four different high schools with GSAs and wanted to do this concert as a benefit for them.

"Well, it grew so much that they moved the concert from the little church that only sat about 150 people to the performing arts center in Groton," Reynolds continued "They sold it out at 800 seats.

"I was so ecstatic to go up to the church about a month afterwards to say thank you and to present the checks to four different GSAs to be able to fund their programs for the following year, and to see that one of the schools that didn't have a GSA had formed one. All the schools were coming together and having joint meetings of the teachers so they could share their resources. I would say that that is getting better--that is one little place were we helped things get better."

And who knows? Perhaps if the Chorus were to return to Poland--a notoriously anti-gay nation formerly belonging to the Soviet bloc--there would be more open minds and appreciative ears there, too, as well as fewer protesters.

"I don't know if we would [get picketed again] or not, but I'd be more than happy to do it!" Reynolds laughed. "I'm sure times have changed a lot there, too. Exposure changes so many people's minds. Just getting to know us changes people's minds.

"You know, I think that so often it's about finding common ground," Reynolds added. "We'll be singing, in this upcoming concert, two songs by Adele--'Someone Like You' and 'Rolling in the Deep.' Right now she is the hottest pop singer around, just sweeping the Grammys.

"For us to bring music that people really know and understand to them--and to say that these are our experiences too; we are just like you--is a very powerful message. It's not all about 'Let's get out and be able to get married!' That's certainly part of it, and teen bullying is part of it, but part of it is saying, 'We are just like you. We have the same fears, the same concerns; some of us are worried about getting old, some of us are worried about the state of the economy. We have the same worries. I think that is a very, very powerful message, and a great leveler."