Dick Kramer conducted the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus from its first public song in 1978 through the 1981 national tour. The papers followed him after he left.
A new chorale
In July 1982, the Bay Area Reporter’s Allen White reported that Kramer was auditioning singers for the Dick Kramer Gay Men’s Chorale. Kramer recalled joining the chorus on November 27, 1978, the night Harvey Milk and George Moscone were killed. He said that was when he decided to commit fully. He was named director that December. His new group would number about 40, small enough to fit on one bus, with a serious classical base and a director who would make the final decisions.
A year later, the Chronicle’s Marilyn Tucker reviewed the chorale at Old First Church. She wrote that Kramer had left the chorus in a disagreement about repertoire. She praised the 36 voices’ impeccable intonation in Handel, Milhaud, Poulenc and new Whitman settings by members, and saw “high promise” for the city’s music scene. By 1988 the chorale had become the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus.
Onward and upward
In 1995, the BAR caught up with Kramer, then 65 and directing the 75-member Contra Costa Chorale, which hired him partly because of the chorus’s first recording. He called the chorus Jon Sims’s idea and credited the gay chorus movement with reviving male-chorus music.
“It was all built upon love.”
— Dick Kramer, as quoted by the Bay Area Reporter, 1995
From the archives: this post retells reporting by the Bay Area Reporter and the San Francisco Chronicle. The original articles survive only in newspaper archives, so we have told the story here in our own words. Details attributed to those outlets are their reporting; see the sources below.
Sources
- Bay Area Reporter, “Ex Chorus Director Launches Chorale” by Allen White, July 15, 1982. ebar.com
- San Francisco Chronicle, “Gay Men’s Chorale Shows Promise” by Marilyn Tucker, September 20, 1983. sfchronicle.com
- Bay Area Reporter, “Gay Men’s Chorus to Celebrate 10 Years of Music Making” by Philip Campbell, August 18, 1988. ebar.com
- Bay Area Reporter, “Catching Up With Dick Kramer: Onward and Upward” by Paul Bollwinkel, March 23, 1995. ebar.com
