Two years ago this month, Charlie Beale started his new job as artistic director of the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus.
His hiring was a major coup for the SDGMC. The world-renowned choral director, jazz pianist, teacher, composer and author formerly served as the artistic director of the London’s Gay Men’s Chorus from 2002 to 2007, and led the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus from 2007 to 2019. The London-born Beale is also the founder of the Global Alliance of Queer Choirs.
When he arrived in 2022, Beale shared his plans with the Union-Tribune for the future of the 110-member chorus. He hoped to gradually rebuild the audience, which plummeted as a result of the pandemic; expand the repertoire and theatricality of the shows; build national and international connections with other queer choruses; and refine and develop a distinctive queer voice for the group that’s activist, relevant and speaks to the wider Southern California community.
You could say that next weekend’s SDGMC concerts at the Balboa Theatre accomplish many of Beale’s goals.
“Freak Out! A Disco Extravagaaanza” will feature a celebration of the disco music of the 1970s, most notably the contributions of the genre’s Black singers and songwriters, who have often been overlooked by history. Music by Earth, Wind & Fire, Donna Summer, The Weather Girls, Sylvester, Chic, Kool & the Gang, the Bee Gees will be featured, along with some drag performances.
There will be roller-skating, ’70s costumes, 41 dancers onstage and audience members are encouraged to dress up as their favorite disco stars.
Beale said he hopes that the fun and interactive elements of the “Freak Out” shows will help attract a mainstream audience outside the LGBTQ+ community.
“We’re certainly bouncing back, but that’s a whole issue that’s alive in San Diego — rebuilding post-COVID,” he said. “People get out of the habit of going out and they’re doing their listening via video and online. So we’re aiming for a programmatic experience for this concert.
“The foyer will be as much as we can make it like a 1970s disco experience. We’re aiming to transport people back to that era and also think a little bit about what that means in 2024. It’s not going to be just a conventional sit-and-be-entertained event. If you want to join in, there will be disco party onstage at one point,” he said.
The concerts will also honor the history of how the discotècques in the ’70s were one of the few spaces where members of the LGBTQ+ community could meet and joyfully express themselves.
“These club spaces were where we could be ourselves and be fabulous,” Beale said. “It’s about how the disco, and now we’d say the dance club, has always been a safe and empowering space for the queer community. We can be our true selves, we can date and not be restricted by attitudes of people who don’t like our community that much. That was very important in the ’70s when that creative burst of freedom happened. Now suddenly we are seeing all that old-fashioned hatred re-emerging in very nasty ways across the country.”
The San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus was created in 2010 from the merger of the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego, launched in 1992, and the San Diego Men’s Chorus, started in 1985. Today, SDGMC is one of the 10 largest Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA) in America. Each year, the group presents three major choral productions in downtown San Diego. It also presents about 30 to 40 annual outreach programs countywide, including concerts at schools that are followed by Q&A sessions where chorus members offer advice to students on finding your voice and dealing with bullying.
One of Beale’s proudest accomplishments since 2022 is forging relationships between the SDGMC and queer choirs in both Tijuana and Mexico City, the latter of which he began working with during his time with the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus.
“The Mexico City group (Coro Gay Cuidad de México) is one of the best in the world, and we were honored to be invited to sing with them in Mexico City,” Beale said of their concert visit last July. He added that through these binational partnerships, SDGMC is now performing more repertoire in Spanish, and more Latinx singers are joining the group.
On the agenda for the coming year will be a push for more gender equity. This summer, SDGMC will work with the lesbian-identified San Diego Women’s Chorus, and there are outreach efforts to recruit more singers who identify as women or who sing with higher voices.
“We want to split off the definition of a higher voice from gender. You can be a male-identifying person who sings soprano or a female-identifying person who sings bass,” he said.
While Beale said he has made progress on, or accomplished, many of the goals he set out for himself in 2022, he’s still learning and adapting to life in San Diego.
After living all of his life in two of the world’s largest cities (London and New York) with subways and an international art scene, he describes adjusting to San Diego as a big lifestyle change. He has also found that San Diego is more conservative than New York, so what “sells” there doesn’t necessarily attract an audience here.
On the plus side, Beale said the chorus members have been receptive to change and he feels he’s presenting better work in San Diego than he was in New York.
“The singers are very committed and they learn faster here,” he said. “In New York, there are hundreds of arts opportunities and paid gigs every day. Here, if you’re queer and want to sing in a chorus, there’s not that much. We get a lot of talented people.”
San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus presents ‘Freak Out! A Disco Extravagaaanza’
When: 7 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. April 21
Where: Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., downtown
Tickets: $26.50 and up
Online: sdgmc.org
pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
