GAZETTE Tampa Bay Gay and Lesbian News

By Stan Kutz (photo by Rand Hall)
MONTREAL, QUEBEC-The 7th International GALA festival opened July 17, 2004 to a special show with Kate Clinton as the guest star to the week long event. The standing room only audience at Salle Wilfred Pelletier Hall in Montreal was the best she could get-the applause was deafening! Montreal prepared three stages at Place des Arts and Complexe Desjardins for performances by 164 choruses from around the globe. There were over 7000 participants from the choruses sporting GALA ID tags all over the island city. Tampa Bay and area was well represented with five choruses, Una Voce: The Florida Men's Chorale; The Gulf Coast Men's Chorus; Crescendo: The Tampa Bay Women's Chorus; The Phoenix: Women's Voices Rising; and No More Silence.

Concert blocks were arranged so that you could choose from at least two performance halls for the best of GALA entertainment most of each day. This was a life-enriching time, beautiful music brought forth continuously-we were either crying, laughing, or swooning the entire time. Lily Tomlin gave a special presentation and tried some new material out on us. She was scheduled for 1-1/2 hours, but performed for us for 2-1/2 hours of nonstop sheer fun.

One of the most touching events was during the Seattle group's "Diversity Harmony" performance. This was the first "youth" chorus in the history of GALA, and a young man stayed on stage after their performance, telling us some bad news. He was now too old for this chorus, and they wanted the shirt off his back at that moment! Another chorus member came onto stage, and took his shirt off. But then he told us some good news: now he was accepted into the Seattle Men's Chorus, and one-by-one his brothers brought him his new tux shirt, tie, cummerbund, and jacket. He then joined that dynamic group, which dazzled us even more.

Montreal is a wonderful city, with clean, safe subways available on an unlimited basis, weekly for about $18 Canadian. Old Town, founded in the 1600s, has much charm and is positioned on the St. Lawrence River. While Montreal is the second largest French-speaking city in the world, English is widely spoken. Food is very good and reasonable, especially in the "Village." The joi de vivre is evident everywhere-maybe because the summer days are so long! The city of over 1.5 million people commissioned fireworks manufacturers from around the world to display their wares, so every three days the fireworks show began around 9:30 PM.

Two people of special note are Rand Hall and Sue Cummings, who helped operate the "GALA Store," a section in the exhibits where all kinds of GALA-branded merchandise was sold. These two seemed to be on the job all the time! According to Rand, half of the merchandise was sold out in 48 hours, and they kept the cashier line busy. By the middle of the week-long festivities, the shelves were quite bare. Many thanks to both for helping to promote these events!

Everyone in the Tampa Bay area can be very proud of its choruses. Crescendo's concert was in the "big" hall (Salle Wilfrid Pelletier). The combination of an outstanding performance, incredible acoustics, and technicians who "tuned" the performance to perfection resulted in what could only be described as the best presentation ever by our gals. Una Voce, the Florida Men's Chorale performed in the Theatre Maisonneuve to a the crowd giving us a standing ovation. We were very proud to have our talented accompanist, Logan Brown, showcased with his arrangement of "Always Through the Changing" from the opera, Ballad of Baby Doe. I heard from a Washington DC chorus member that he knew the piece well and he was very touched. Other choruses sang one of our tunes, "Come to the Music," but we were told our interpretation had a special high energy level that made it unique. While we didn't get to meet him, the composer of our song "A Red, Red Rose" was at the festival, and passed compliments to us through Tim Seelig, conductor of Dallas' Turtle Creek Chorale. Our own conductor, John Philip Mullinax, made his farewell performance with us a fond memory (with lots of tears in his departure).

Near the end of the festivities, the Notre Dame Basilica in Old Montreal (site of many famous Montreal events including Celine Dion's wedding), four "GALA choruses" sang. These choruses were made up of folks from around the world-all members of other choruses, with a transgender group, all women, all men, and mixed voice sets . I sang with the men's group. This event was doubly remarkable in that it was the first time openly gay choruses were invited to sing in a Catholic Church in North America. The second half of the concert at Notre Dame was a special appearance by the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir-and they invited our GALA Festival Choruses on stage to join them in encore.

The most powerful force GALA choruses has is changing people's hearts through music. This event, like the one held in Tampa in 1996, continues on in my heart as a monumental force I hope everyone can experience.

Stan Kutz, one of the founders of Una Voce: the Florida Men's Chorale, is also Treasurer of the organization. In his "spare time" he is Regional Retail Sales Consultant for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage in Tampa, FL

COMMUNITY CALENDAR presented by the Tampa Bay Business Guild

LINKS

Are You Registered to Vote? It's easy! Click Here!

AIDS Memorial Bells

Tampa Bay Business Guild

Metropolitan Charities/Metro Center

gaystpete.com

Tampa Bay Lesbians

Equality Florida

National Center for Lesbian Rights

Winter Pride Tampa Bay

St. Pete Pride

queertampa.com

King of Peace MCC

First United Church of Tampa

Gypsy Productions

Team Tampa Bay

Una Voce