Raising their Voices in Song

About 60% of the Rochester Gay Men’s Chorus’ members are 55 years old or older. Though almost all of them are gay, the chorus also has a lesbian, a transsexual and a heterosexual in its ranks

By Mike Costanza

 

David Knoll calls singing with the Rochester Gay Men’s Chorus a “win-win-win-win.”

“It’s the joy of making music, the joy of making music with gay peers and allies, the social component of meeting every week and building something together,” the 70-year-old Rochester resident said.

Knoll came together with the other members of the RGMC on March 22 for Divas of Empowerment, the concert the well-known chorus held at The Hochstein School, which provides music and dance instruction in Rochester. The group treated its audience to Cher’s “A Different Kind of Love Song,” Beyoncé’s “Freedom” and other uplifting selections, along with a love song and even a dance number. The show presented more than just RGMC’s artistic style.

“Our political environment is such that our identities are being challenged,” said Jeff Elsenheimer Jr., the 44-year-old chairman of RGMC’s board of directors. “We need to remind ourselves to stay strong and have hope for the future.”

The audience responded to the performances with resounding applause.

The RGMC was founded in 1982, when five friends gathered together to use music to spread the acceptance of social diversity.

“It came about in response to the AIDS epidemic and just a way for gay men to unite together and come together for a common cause,” Elsenheimer said. “Our mission is to create social change through excellence in the choral arts.”

The chorus grew to have 18 members and held its first concert on May 7, 1983, at a local church. Nowadays, about 50 people make up the group, which performs three main concerts a year, generally in Rochester.

“We do everything from classic pieces to modern day pop songs, from Broadway tunes to songs that have a deeper meaning,” Elsenheimer said.

About 60% of the RGMC’s members are 55 years old or older. Though almost all of them are gay, the chorus also has a lesbian, a transsexual and a heterosexual in its ranks.

Knoll helped found the RGMC because he loved singing, had watched gay men’s choruses form in other parts of the US and wanted to give local gay men a new way to socialize.

“At that time, the gay community needed alternatives to our limited social connections of gay bars,” he said.

RGMC’s performances also give “a face and a name to gay people and the broader LGBTQIA community that we now encompass,” Knoll said.

He went on to add that it is particularly important to give this community a face and name today, when “in particular my trans peers, if you will, are really under attack.”

LGBTQIA stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex and Asexual.”

In addition to helping found RGMC in 1982, Knoll married his husband that year and founded the Genesee Co-op Federal Credit Union, which particularly serves those with low incomes. He went on to spend 35 years with the credit union, some of them as its CEO. Working alongside his husband, David Skinner, Knoll has also renovated and restored several neglected or abandoned homes in his Southwest Rochester neighborhood.

“A great joy in my life has been to see the quality of life for everyone in our neighborhood improve as we and others have worked to make homes livable again,” he said.

Dick Madden joined the RGMC about seven years ago in order to become more active in the gay community and act on his longtime love of music.

“I’ve played piano since I was 4 years old and guitar since I was 12,” the 69-year-old said. “I’ve sung in a church chorus before and decided it (the RGMC) was something I’d like to be a part of,”

Onstage at The Hochstein School, Madden particularly enjoyed performing the song “I Love You More.”

“’I Love You More’…is just a beautiful love song,” the Rochester resident said. “I can get emotional over some of the music we sing.”

The song is from “Tyler’s Suite,” which is dedicated to the memory of Tyler Clementi, a talented young musician who died by suicide in 2010 after being outed by his college roommate and bullied.

Madden who calls himself a retired “jack of all trades,” considers the RGNC a kind of family.

“We’re a group of people that spend a fair amount of time together rehearsing and supporting each other and applauding each other’s abilities and talents,” he said.

Once the RGMC left The Hochstein School’s stage, the Mount Hope World Singers stepped up to perform songs from around the world.

“MHWS seeks to build community and foster intercultural understanding through engaging, high quality, respectful performance of music in original languages from around the globe,” said Annika Bently, the group’s artistic director.

All three of the songs the MHWS performed that evening were sung in their native tongues. “Wau Bulan” is a traditional Malaysian folk song and the lyrics of “The Island Itself” were written by Irish poet Joan McBreen. In order to sing the group’s third selection, “Lua, Lua, Lua,” its members had to learn to pronounce Portuguese.

That was the kind of challenge that led Carol Santos to join MHWS back in 2014.

“I thought the idea of singing music in languages that were different and not familiar to me, might be a way to exercise my brain and also to be a challenge, which is also a good thing to do as you move into your senior years,” the married 79-year-old Brighton resident said.

She’s also glad that those who want to join MHWS don’t need to pass an audition.

“Everybody who wants to sing is qualified,” Santos said. “Out of all those willing voices, they have turned out really beautiful music.”

Santos is also a member of her church’s chorus and has sung in the annual Puerto Rican Festival and the Rochester Fringe Festival. Before retiring, she worked as a registered nurse and as an innkeeper.

When MHWS was formed in 2013, the group put an ad in a local newspaper seeking singers. Dorothy Petrie was among those who responded.

“I had retired from teaching and was looking for a choral group,” the married, 74-year-old Pittsford resident said. “It fit with who I am.”

Petrie has raised her voice in song since she was a child growing up on a small farm outside of Alexandria Bay in the Thousand Islands.

“I basically grew up singing in church choirs and then in school choruses,” she said. “As a young adult, I directed church choirs.”

Petrie went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in music and to become an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. While working as a minister, she acquired a certification to teach instrumental and vocal music. Petrie put that certification to use at the Greece Central School District, where she taught music to elementary school students for about 10 years before retiring.

After two to three years with MHWS, Petrie left the group to care for her elderly mother. She returned to the group in the fall of 2023.

“The music, as the group has developed, has been more and more challenging,” she said. “It keeps us on our toes, singing in different languages than what we’re accustomed to.”

The choir’s spirit is another big plus.

“We all sing from the heart,” Petrie said.

For more information on the Rochester Gay Men’s Chorus, go to https://thergmc.org.

For more information on the Mount Hope World Singers, go to https://www.mounthopeworldsingers.org.