On Thursday, July 12, 2012, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus performed at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
The concert, “Love Can Build a Bridge,” was sponsored by the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Judy and Dennis Shepard formed the foundation in 1999 after their son Matthew, an openly gay university student, was murdered near Laramie in October 1998. The foundation works for justice for the LGBTQ community.
Musicologist Kevin C. Schattenkirk later opened a scholarly study of the chorus with this concert. Published in the journal MUSICultures in 2021, it looked at how gay choruses move their audiences and challenge anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and violence. He argued the work rests on three kinds of connection: among chorus members, between the chorus and its audience, and between singers and figures from LGBTQ history.
From the archives: this post draws on a scholarly article in the journal MUSICultures. We have told the story here in our own words. Details attributed to the article are its author’s reporting; see the source below.
Sources
- MUSICultures (Canadian Society for Traditional Music), “Telling LGBTQ+ Stories through Choral Music: A Case Study of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus” by Kevin C. Schattenkirk, Vol. 48, 2021. journals.lib.unb.ca
