bigmacbear | GALA Festival 8 -- Saturday, July 19

gmjambear and I started our Saturday by traveling around the area snapping pictures of all our hometown groups' banners on the light posts. One side of the BEARatones' banner was misprinted to leave off the final "s". From there we went to the Bear Brunch at the Marriott. We had nice chats with Clair and Mike from the BEARatones as well as

musicbearmn and Keith. On the way from brunch to the concert venues, Gary took a picture of me -- with my sweat-soaked T-shirt, in front of the nearby Trinity Episcopal Cathedral -- which I intend to caption "like the proverbial whore..." ;-)

We began the final day's concerts in Knight Concert Hall for the combined set of the Renaissance City Choirs from Pittsburgh. The women started out with a solid set including "The Ladies Who Lunch", then made way for the men whose set included Melissa Etheridge's "Tuesday Morning", a memorial ballad to Mark Bingham, and then closed with three joint numbers. It took a lot of coordination to pull off all that performance in the time allotted and I was suitably impressed. After Pittsburgh we switched halls to see the Windy City Gay Chorus, with a set of (mostly) classic choral standards out of which shone a piece called "Easy Silence". Their set closed the shorter concert block so we returned to Knight to see the Denver GMC close the longer block. They began their set with a South African song about taking a train out of South Africa, which was impressive as was their performance of "Sweet Rivers", an original shape-note hymn performed first as written, and then in a more lush and complex modern arrangement.

The second and final concert block of the day (and the final block of the Festival) followed the previous block with only a half hour in between. This final block featured small group performances in 15-minute sets. We started this block in the Ziff Ballet Opera House to see del Castro from San Francisco, a trio who were the smallest ensemble of the Festival. I don't think the lead singer of the trio realized that as soon as you start clapping the beat onstage you will be joined by the audience whether you like it or not, and this caused an awkward moment during their performance of the Russian folk song "Kalinka" because they needed to be able to set the tempo and that is hard to do when you have three against 1000. They were followed by the somewhat larger Vocal Minority (also from San Francisco) with excellent renditions of "Love Train" by the Ojays (the song that Gary sang at the New Member party that prompted our director, Dennis, to ask why he wasn't joining SMC as well) and the theme from "Mighty Mouse". Next came Sotto Voce from Charlotte who did an impressive piece called "Words" with a vocal percussion section from the GMC of Charlotte. We switched halls then and caught yet another group of San Franciscans, the Lollipop Guild, who shone on an a cappella set including "Africa" as performed by Toto, "Up the Ladder to the Roof" in the fast doo-wop style exhibited by so many groups in Montreal, "Danny Boy" which they did very well although I'd prefer one of the other arrangements we've done to this one, and finally "Ghost Riders in the Sky" which I think I will recommend for our upcoming Unplugged concert. The final block closed with Cascade from Portland with more a cappella work including "Ribbons Down My Back" with a haunting bass melody and "Heartache Tonight" by Don Henley of all pieces with which to close a Festival.

After this final set we had a short while to relax before the Legacy Awards. Dennis had told the choruses to come to this ceremony to support Kevin, our artistic interpreter, who was slated to receive a service award (and this was before his performance on "Every Sperm Is Sacred"!). There were hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar so we had a light nosh before the ceremony. Afterward we went upstairs in the same facility for the Closing Ceremonies, which featured a final sing-along, a video presentation of the week's activities, and a mass choir performance. After the ceremonies we were a little hungry so we went up to the Bayside mall for dinner at a Mediterranean food stand in the food court. I had gyro meat, dolmades and rice pilaf; Gary had a somewhat lighter dinner. Then we walked around and listened to the music before taking a stroll through Bayfront Park to the hotel and to bed.