Ilos Angeles mimes SUNDAY AUGUST2,1992

Members of Gay Men's Chorus of , who usually wear tuxedo; for concerts. don expressive costumes for "Hidden Legacies" performances.:. 11IELONG· SHADOW OF AIDS·' • This is the last of three articles following up on .. stories of people: .. facing A IDS. ' '.._ Since thefirst -i.:: member of the .. Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angelesfell ill, 76 members The Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles Gives Its have died of . AIDS. lis caniata . c mourns their Mem bers the Courage and:Lov~;:toConquer Their Fear deaths and area matter of life and celebrates life. By BOB SIPCHEN ·'.,\~:.~.'.'MAR1.SSA.RO'l'~ / ForTheTimes liMES HMF WRITEI( ,.death. o ~naplh~~ In another context, headlights . in the Willie Nelson's "You · deepening Were Always on My • dusk, how Mind" might not be so many peo- moving. But here. sung ple drlv •. by the Windy City ing home Chorus. the words on Wilshire ponder the sucker-punch Albert A Smith. lact that they're dy- ing? A baritone with the Gay Men's Chorus of We sing, to keep from MARISSA ROTH / F'orTheTiml:s Los Angeles, Smith is cnJing. in Colorado for Gala Chorus member Daniel Mortenson talks with his . IV, a six-day summer The music spills into mother Phyllis Mortenson after a performance. feslivalthat has flood- the parking lot of the . ed downtown Denver United Methodist Church, but a half-dozen Cub with more lhan 3,500 singers from 65 far-flung gay Scouts in new blue uniforms don't listen; they and lesbian groups. chase each other whooping and laughing outside. In the decade since Acquired Immune Deficien- ·Is even one wondering how many more warm cy Syndrome first infiltrated the gay community, evenings he'll be alive? 26 members 01 the Windy City Chorus have died of We sing, instead 0/ screaming ... AIDS. The Los Angeles chorus's toll stands at 76. Now follow the music. Look through the gritty For thosewho have survived, even old saws- glass where 150 voices harmonize, resonating from Little things I could have said and done, but I never the church's vaulted ceiling: took the time-assume new meaning. Spotting a tuxedo-clad.Windy City singer in the lVe sing to keep from crying. . . throng, Smith. claps a hand on his shoulder: Over and over. they intone the same lines, "Thank you," Smith says. The two melt into a working on pitch. projection, enunciation. teary hug. MARISSA RO'I'H / F'orTheTimcs From the intensity on their faces, you'd think Six years ago, Smith learned he is Hlv positive, this commissioned cantata, "Hidden Legacies," is carrying the virus believed to trigger AIDS. During a rehearsal, Ron Ackland hugs Tad Mont- their sacred calling. "1 figured, I'm going to die. I might as well dance gomery who missed months of chorus perform- You'd think their upcoming concerts in Denver Please see CHORUS, E6 ances because of illnesses caused by AIDS. E6 SUNDAY, AUGUST 2, 1992 As for his father's~_elief that sexual orientation is a matter of ,', .choice, a moral decision, Srnith, , "wrote: "Why would I choose, why" '''would anyone choose, to be part of ~ :,·CHORUS another hated minority?" ohn Cox, 70, is tone deaf. But he' :: Continued from El t : J listens intently while sitting in \ "un I drop," he says, So he partied, ! the empty Denver concert hall as ! 'caroused and ripped into life with the chorus does a sound check. I frantic abandon. He's been through this routine 1 Then it struck him: All anyone hundreds of times since his lover' of j "has is time, no one knows how two decades was accepted to sing": much. And he hadn't been using bass at the chorus's inaugural audi- ; his particularly well. tion in 1978. Cox signed on to help : , Smith earns his living as a gem- with the· group's boggling logistics" ..I, ologist and antique jewelry dealer. I and has become an informal coun- 'I .But that's never been his passion. selor to its members. ,"i "I started thinking," he recalls. In the early days, Cox recalls, the I "It's important to do the things I chorus was mainly a social group, " love to do, not just the things I'm just another pickup stop for some of 'j supposed to do. I need to follow my. ita newly liberated members. heart." By the early '80s, though, it had It led him to the chorus. evolved into a respected musical Many members describe the organization, with song, rather chorus as a sort of comfortable than sex, as its raison d' e'tre. transition between the encompass- Then rumors of a deadly new ,ing heterosexual world and the gay disease swept the gay community. subculture. Those openly gay find The first member got sick' solace in the focused creativity; around 1981, Cox remembers. Now others have used the group to edge some estimate that 50% to 65% of ';'out"-to themselves and others. the group harbors the HIV be- The latter doesn't always work. lieved to cause the immune system' , A few years ago, one man invited breakdown that allows opportunis- his mother, who didn't know he tic diseases to invade. was gay, to fly in from the Midwest >" In 1987, members pushed Jerry to hear him sing at the chorus's '~"Carlson, the group's second direc- annual Christmas show. tor, onto the stage of a Methodist , " ,:She did. Then she disowned him. church in his wheelchair to hear In 1988, the respected director of one last concert before he died. 'a Lutheran college choir in Orange That, Cox says, began the end of ..County appeared with the chorus the group's denial. But singing - on television. A shy man of 55, he "Hidden Legacies" for the first had joined the gay chorus as a first, ' time earlier this year marked the tentative attempt to confront his first collective reckoning. sexuality. Everyone knew that the Denver The next day, however, one of audiences, comprised almost en- his students told the school's dean tirely of gay and lesbian singers, what he'd seen on TV. ' would be warmly supportive-s-and The choir director explained that acutely. critical. ' 'he was gay in orientation, but So the 120 members of the L.A. celibate his entire life; the univer- chorus able to make the trip ar- sity fired him anyway. rived in Denver with an artistic " Albert Smith had never quite fit purpose that bordered on mission- in as a kid. He wasn't great at ary zeal. 'sports, and the other kids in his Philadelphia neighborhood-par- ntil he joined the gay chorus, ticularly, he says, the other black Utenor Rob Briner never sus- .kids=-never let him forget it. pected that homosexuals embraced When Smith passed his chorus such' a spectrum of attitudes, be- audition, he called his father, a liefs and behaviors. prominent attorney, and told him In Denver he finds himself im-; he'd finally found a place where he mersed in what seems like a whole : felt at peace, where he could do city gone gay. For six days, Den- .. what he loved without fear.:.1 ver's two large concert halls boast His father wrote back: "Your concerts from morning till night.' , participation in the chorus is a Hotels near the performing arts source of great embarrassment to center brim with men and women ': me .... " wearing name tags and T-shirts ' At 2 a.m., Smith sat in his West advertising every corner of the ' ': Hollywood apartment and com- country. , 'posed a reply.: "I'm sorry' that it alone is .represente(t;~ ; "hurts you. But this is not for you. I by choruses from Long Beach, San'f . know you'd prefer I not be open Diego, San Francisco and Silicon if. about this. But that would be the Valley. Then there is the Atlantaj" same as if 1 were light-skinned and Feminist Women's Chorus, the De-7& tried to pass as white." " ,~~ ) ) )

..~---"'---'--" .. , .•.. ,. troit Together Men's Chorus, the On one hotel elevator, singers before the L. A. chorus's afternoon Cathedral." Gay Men's Chorus of South Florida, pack in elbow-to-elbow, looking at performance, Bob Cross sits at the the Indianapolis Men' Chorus, the maps and making plans to head for counter in a 24-hour coffee shop, City Gay Men's Chorus, the Denver Rodeo or Boulder or waiting patiently as a frazzled ·he fourth movement of "Hid- the Portland Lesbian Choir .. .. the Rockies. waiter runs burgers and pancakes T. den Legacies" is a twanging The groups perform virtually. "I'm thinking of going out to the to an overflow crowd of singers. country- Western salute to people nonstop, covering everything from Air Force Academy," 'says one man Bringing "Hidden Legacies" to who have cared for AIDS patients, "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat" sotto voce. "I hear the scenery's gay audiences is important, says and a lament by those who see and "It's Raining Men" to commis- just wonderful." Cross, whose lover of 35 years is their friends vanishing. sioned works and South African GALA stores sell tapes and CDs also in the chorus. As the song progresses at the freedom medleys. When they by the many critically acclaimed "But I'd also like to do it in a first Deriver concert, a dozen cho- aren't singing or listening, chorus choruses, as well as the inevitable more hostile environment," he rus members pair off and dance a members jam public spaces around pins and buttons. One bumper says. Adjusting his snappy motor- graceful Texas two-step. the center and pour through the sticker reads: "Hate is not a family ing cap, he chuckles: "We should And what of those people we don't streets, partying hardier than value." do it at what's-his-name's church even know? Shriners on a full- blown fez fest. Just past midnight, the morning in Orange County-at the Crystal Who give of themselves and try ery pops a pill and settles back, waiting for it to knock down the flash fire moving from his toes. Later, he sits in a chair in the corner of the hotel room, rallying the energy to get ready for the not to show evening performance. How short the time is when it's ~ A Donaid Duck Band-Aid covers / " your time to go a tiny mark on Montgomery's right And they're just left behind. arm where his IV tube pulled out. At their Christmas performanc- The arm had become a problem es, and at spring concerts where in one of those stupifying, innoc- they offer lighthearted show tunes uous moments so familiar to the and pop songs, the chorus usually AIDS-infected. Back in April, wears tuxedos. Montgomery's mother had visited For "Legacies," members don from EI Cajon. They went to buy whatever they feel expresses their plants at a nursery and as they identities within a color scheme of browsed, a thorn nailed his thumb. white, black and gray. He barely felt it. But bacteria The attire, sort of an expanded swaggered past his broken immune Village People vision, ranges from system and by the next day, infec- leather. and chains to business tion had swelled the arm to twice suits, a naval officer's uniform and its size. cowboy duds. Boom. He found himself The work itself is similarly ec- stretched in a hospital bed, tubes lectic. A cantata in seven move- poking all over the place, morphine ments=-Ior chorus, four synthesiz- easing him through a dreamy two ers, bass and percussion-the work weeks during which his tempera- whipsaws from popish melody to ture soared, dehydration drained driving dissonance to sweet the vitality from his flesh and church-choir harmonics as it another 10 pounds dropped from tracks gay life from the innocent, his 6-foot-6 frame. hedonistic pre-AIDS era, through Montgomery had pretty much the terrifying early days of the come out as gay by the end of high tragedy, to acceptance of a new school. The gap between family reality. and friends never opened, as it did When the chorus performed for some ill the chorus. But another "Legacies" recently for a mixed canyon appeared with the disease's audience in Dallas, a woman back- first signs. stage had been shocked by the When his lifelong best friend got sight of men dancing. married, the friend ignored family "My mom's in that audience," protests and included his gay com- she had squealed, "and the blue rade in the wedding party. Years hair is rising." later, Montgomery told his buddy But nary an eyebrow goes up in he had AIDS. Denver when the men, one in tight "He bailed on me," he remem- leather pants, another the spitting bers, a trace of bitterness infecting image of a genuine high plains his uniformly upbeat demeanor. goat-roper in his 1O-gallon hat, Montgomery is determined to sashay across the floor and do-si-. hang on until medicine learns how do. to fend off the opportunistic dis- By the time "Legacies" dissolves eases that hound him. He's certain into a lullaby, a gentle, personal that his attitude will carry him. In plea for death, the audience is the meantime, his priorities have under the chorus' spell. . changed. " , ... Dream, journey's end. I say Last Jariuary, Montgomery quit farewell my finest friend. his job at Fred Sands Realtors: "I Turn inward now and try to find, decided I'm not going to die trying Your spirit journey now defined. to get someone's mortgage to close," hesays. As the chorus pours into the He's also cut back on other labyrinth of offstage corridors after taxing things. But not the chorus. the concert, a singer with the' "Have you eaten anything today, Boston Chorus approaches director Tad?" asks Steve Smith, editorial Jon Bailey. director at KNX radio and Mont- He intends a simple "thanks," gomery's GALA roommate, as he but his head falls onto Bailey's runs a brush through his friend's shoulder, his arms encircle his hair. Montgomery nods, glancing in neck. the direction of a box of Lorna' Minutes later the words finally Doones on the night stand between come: "That was the most religious their unmade beds. , experience of my life." Last summer, Montgomery had stayed behind while the chorus 'Ahhh!" , toured Eastern Europe. "I didn't It's 3 a.m. and Tad Mont- want to be in Budapest and get gomery awakes screaming. travelers' flu," he says. The peripheral neuropathy that But with the chorus gone, he makes his feet burn has bullied Please see CHORUS, E1 past the medicine again. Montgom- SUNDA Y, AUGUST 2, 1992 E7 'LOS ANGELES TIMES .THE LONG SHADOW OF AIDS

Chorus members' attire for' "Hidden Legacies" naval officer's uniform and cowboy duds. The work, : ranges from leather and chains to business suits, a a seven-movement cantata, is similarly eclectic.

At this performance, as at the he penultiinate night of the last, people reflexively reach over T festival features a multi-cho- CHORUS seats to hold other hands. As the rus AIDS memorial concerl lu\laby ends, crying punctuates the The final piece, a movement of Continued from E6 silence. . John Corigliano's Pulitzer Prize- realized how integral it had be-. Word of L.A.'s moving piece has winning "Of Rage and Remem- come. After the arm infection, his spread; the audience at the second brance," completes the week-long doctor said Montgomery couldn't performance is heavy with repeat catharsis. travel. customers who have .. brought It ends with the New York, But Montgomery was equally friends. Portland, San Francisco and Seat- firm, "I'm'gcing to Denver." .If we could sing you health, tle choruses calling out the names So in late June, he packed the If we could sing you time. . '. of the composer's friends who have .died of AIDS. . gadgetry for his intravenous drip, Throughout the auditorium, stuffed an Igloo cooler with 15 The audience is invited to join. those withered by sadness perk up As musicians somberly stroll the · . types of expensive medicines, and as the chorus pours itself into its · . dragged it onto a plane. aisles ringing chimes, people open up in the darkness, - "John Gringler," someone in a · ·Director Bailey has offered to 'Hidden Legacies' tracks balcony barely whispers. let Montgomery sit during the gay life from the "My 3,year-old son!" shouts a Denver performances, but the voice choked with emotion. .'-.singer wants none of that, innocent, hedonistic From the shadows where the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles As the chorus sings a "Hidden pre-AIDS era, through the sits, dozens of names escape like Legacies" song called "The Night- terrifying early days of fleeing ghosts. ·mare" during the second perform- the tragedy, to Mark Ashland! · .anee, a jagged silhouette of singers Dennis Dauth! stands out against a red -backdrop acceptance of a new Gerry Ramminger! like the Rockies at sunset, Mont- reality. Paul Ribs! gomery's neatly coiffed hair is the Jim Holman! ·highest peak. Afterward, people silently move ; down the lobby stairs, their tear- · Bailey's baton flails and the cho- testimonial to the power of song. rus boorns. streaked faces an overwhelming We sing to keep from crying. mosaic of grief. · A bottomless canyon between sick Our song can't stop the dying, but Inside, in a clark corner, an L. A. andweU focused in song chorus member cradles a singer The chasm is fear and no man can United and strong you can hear from Boston, whose deep, hollow · ·teU sobs fill the empty, cathedral-like What courage it takes, what per- We conquer fear with. , . LOVE. hall. :sonal heUto. . . cross over. Outside, though, the sorrow "Hidden Legacies" is a success. slowly lifts. " 'Bailey's fingers comb the air, The final lines-If our songs can Thoughts. of death dissipate in :coaxing well- rehearsed meaning change us, could they change you?- air scrubbed clean by thunder- :from' a haunting stage scream: have hit home. storms. Peals of soft laughter echo Aaaaa-aaa-AAAA-aaaah! Aaaaa- Other choruses will perform it, from the buildings and the voices aaa-AAAA-ah! spreading a gospel of life in the of a women's chorus rise up in an '. Ah! Ail! AI!! Wake up! . . face of death. impromptu protest song, I~ THE LONG SHADOW OF AIDS

Conducted by Jon Bailey, members of the chorus rehearse, top and left, at a United Methodist Church, where their harmonies resonate from the vaulted ceiling. Over and over, they intone the same lines, working on pitch, projection and enunciation. Later, they gather to receive travel instructions for their appearances in Denver and Dallas.

Photos by MARISSA ROlll / For The Times ) ) )

'Hidden Legacies': Birth of a Healing Melody

By BOB SIPCHEN cantata that tracked the epidemic and the gay TIMES STAFF WRITER community's response. Bourland turned to UCLA professor and lyricist John Hall, and ack when Jon Bailey headed the Insti- the two went to work. tute of Sacred Music at Yale University, A year later, they finished "Hidden Lega- Bfew students or colleagues would have cies." figured him to later direct a gay men's chorus. . Not everyone in the chorus liked it at first. Then again, a few years earlier, no one "I thought the lyrics were kind of trite," would have expected this son of a Methodist said one member. minister to be involved with music at all. But when the chorus began singing the As a boy in Indiana, Bailey loved music. He work, many couldn't make it through a song was good at it. But somehow he got it in his without their emotions pouring out. Most felt head that music was unsavory. At North- a transcendent connection to the songs. western University, he avoided. the music When the group performed "Hidden Lega- department entirely, he says, because "that's cies" earlier this year in Los Angeles, some where all the queers were." critics weren't impressed. Bailey graduated with a degree in philoso- For once, though, chorus members didn't phy, then took off on a two-year hitchhiking care. Sure of their own emotional response, tour around the world before returning to they grew intent on sharing it with others attend seminary at Drew University. By then, who had been devastated by AIDS. he had confronted his musicality .. Karl Menninger; founder of the the famous But not his sexuality. medical clinic, had a universal prescription After a Fulbright scholarship to Germany, Choral director Jon Bailey talks' with Melan- for any serious ailment, Bailey says: "Join a he married, figuring that would "fix" his chorus." And Bailey believes that the songs, ie Demore, who performed in Denver with wobbling sexual orientation. It didn't, nor did and the singing, can help heal the gay the two children he fathered and reared. Voices, a Bay Area lesbian choral group. community. Finally, at age 42, while heading the music He knows it has helped heal the chorus. department at Pomona College at Claremont, Chorus of Los Angeles, or clowning at "In a chorus, you have to meet your he faced facts. rehearsal, or giving the group one of his brother. You have to listen to each other. As he grappled with his sexual identity, he serious pep talks, that he is most truly Only if you listen to each other are you able to himself. . realized he was confronting a universal sing with each other," he says. human dilemma: the struggle to be oneself. When he first became director, Bailey went "Since the Middle Ages, there's been an "Being gay brings clarity to the process of on the group's annual Christmas tour of interesting connection between music and coming out," he says. "But, ultimately, ev- hospices and AIDS clinics. Each time they the religious world." Religion, he explains, eryone must be who they are." sang to a dying patient, Bailey would step out derives from the word ligament, or ligare-a Bailey's ex-wife has since remarried. Bai- of the room and weep. binding together. ley and her new husband are friends, and his . But the pain was instructive. "Over time, it became about all this stuff," children spend each summer with their "I've seen so many men die, that sad as it is, Bailey says, pointing from the heavens to the father. . it's a reality that you slowly let into your own Earth. "Rather than about this," he contin- That's not as unusual' as people might consciousness, and the fear goes away," he ues, pointing back and forth, person to think, Bailey says. "On Father's Day, we says. "I became more open to death as'a part person, heart to heart. asked for all the dads in the chorus to stand of life." Now, Bailey says, the chorus is his minis- up. About 20 members stood." Last year; Bailey decided it was time to try. Bailey still teaches at Pomona, where he confront AIDS head-on-with music. And he isn't speaking figuratively when he also directs the choir and glee club. He . asked composer John Bourland," a adds: "It's music that is keeping people in this But it's when he's conducting the Gay Mens, UCLA music professor, to write a choral chorus alive."