SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Inside a church In the heart of Hillcrest, the San Diego Gay Men's Chorus gathers on Mondays. Leading them in a recent vocal warm up was artistic director Dr. Charles Beale.
"Something happens when a bunch of people come together to sing, that's kind of, you could call it transcendence. Like we all come together, our voices come together into one sound," Beale says.
Beale and the nonprofit's president of the board of directors, David Decker, are just two of the more than 100 active members of the chorus.
"We're a family. One of the things about queer people is sometimes we don't have our birth family for whatever various reasons. So, we have the concept of chosen family, and we come here and people really stay because they eventually find a home," Decker says.
"And, and the other side of it is that we're a community, but also a community that sings really well and cares about singing," Beale says. "So, you know, we get to the moment of performance and then we turn from this community into a kind of highly professional, hopefully quite slick, chorus with a dance team and choreography and costumes and a whole nine yards of story to tell."
The chorus puts on several major shows a year at the Balboa Theatre downtown. Their next is in August, and it's called "Let's Get Loud: Singing for Change."
"There's so much going on in the political climate right now, and there's so much legislation, like thousands of pieces of legislation, from the local level all the way up to the national level of our government that are against, you know, reproductive rights and gender affirming care and even just attacking the lives of queer people in general to where it's like... being able to exist without fear of losing your job," Decker says. "And so it's really important for us to stand up and make statements and say we're here... To go to an old saying: We're here, we're queer and we're not going anywhere."
"I see art, as well as being a way of saying, we hear, also offering a really important communication tool and some joy," Beale says.
The chorus is entertainment with a purpose; it's something that's always been core to this organization that got its start nearly 40 years ago.
"I would say really over the past 40 years, we've gone from a small wonderful organization to a large chorus that is musically active and works with other choruses in really promoting social justice and advocacy," says Jesse Schifmann, the chorus' executive director. "We really tell stories through our music. We tell stories about the LGBTQ+ community, about the struggles we go through, about our successes and the beautiful common bond that we all share."
Members say what they do can absolutely be life changing for some people.
"I get those emails from parents saying I now understand my teenager's situation much better because I've seen 100 and 50 people on stage just like them, and I feel much more comfortable now," says Beale.
"Almost every show the curtain goes down or we end the show and you turn around and there are new members just tears flowing down their face, and we have many stories of them saying I didn't realize that, you know, I hadn't just joined a chorus, but I joined a family and that family includes the audience," Decker says.
"What we do is we change hearts and minds through art," Beale says.
