Wednesday 10 June 2015

One Voice Mixed Chorus: Creating social change through music

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One Voice Mixed Chorus

Twenty years ago, you couldn’t have snapped a photo of One Voice Mixed Chorus without giving some people the chance to leave the room. Being photographed was too risky. Jobs were at stake.
Today we have Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair, in a bustier.
North America’s largest LGBTA chorus (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Allies), with 125 singers ranging in age from 16 to 78, One Voice will perform at the Ordway Concert Hall on Saturday. The “Gender UnChecked!” concert will feature the company’s signature mix of carefully chosen songs and first-person stories.
An interactive display in the lobby will include giant gender-bending puppets created with help from Bart Buch of Heart of the Beast, a dress-up corner where people can try on different kinds of clothing, and a “Lucy Booth” (“The Gender Expert Is In”) staffed by therapists and volunteers. Got questions about gender? Just ask.
Jane Ramseyer Miller is in her 20th year as artistic director for One Voice, which is based in St. Paul. Purely by coincidence, we spoke with her soon after the Jenner photo broke.
MinnPost: That Vanity Fair cover could not have happened 20 years ago.
Jane Ramseyer Miller: It’s really amazing. I was just writing a welcome to the concert and musing on exactly that. Ten years ago, my first singer came out to me as transgender and transitioned from soprano to bass. What an incredibly different culture and world we live in.
MP: What was One Voice like for transgender people when you arrived in 1995?
JM: It was a very cautious community. About 15 years ago we started welcoming transgender individuals. There were a lot of questions, a lot of misunderstandings, a lot of mistakes made in terms of assumptions and language that was used. We did a lot of education internally.
In 2003, One Voice hosted the first ever (as far as I’m aware of) transgender vocal festival. We explored what happens physiologically to voices, and we put together a transgender chorus and brought in clinicians and also did some workshops for transgender folks telling their own story. That was the very beginning for us. We have continued to listen and try to understand and also to educate.
MP: One Voice is almost a microcosm of the culture. Back in the 1970s and ’80s, gay men and lesbians did not exactly get along.
[Note: One Voice Mixed Chorus was founded in 1988 by Paul Petrella.]
JM: That’s exactly right, and it’s very much part of our history. The founder tells the story of deciding to start a gay and lesbian chorus because the two communities were so separate. In the middle of the AIDS epidemic, women started caring for friends who had AIDS, and that was a piece of what brought the two communities together.
One Voice started as a chorus for gay men and lesbians. It has really grown and changed since, incorporating a lot of transgender people and folks who identify as bisexual. We did a survey about three years ago and discovered that 29 percent of our chorus identifies as straight.
MP: What first drew you to One Voice? What were your professional and personal reasons?
Jane Ramseyer Miller
Photo by Brent Dundore
Jane Ramseyer Miller
JM: I had been conducting, but mostly in church and religious communities. As I came out, I was welcome in fewer of those settings. The opportunity came up to conduct this chorus, and it was a good mix of my interest in music and also my interest in peace and justice issues in community organizing. All are very much part of the role I play within this chorus.
MP: What has kept you there for 20 years?
JM: I have stayed because of the real sense of passion and commitment of the singers who are part of this community, and because I believe in the life-changing effect that this kind of music can have on our community and on the world, and because every year I get to program new and different concerts that are fun and exciting.
MP: Does One Voice commission new music?
JM: We do. We’ve commissioned probably over 25 pieces in the chorus’s history. One of the things I like to do is take pieces of music that may be traditional in one choral setting, then add a twist to them or an introduction that speaks to our mission.
MP: You have specific things you want to tell the audience, and things you want them to understand.
JM: Yes. For example, when I began programming for “Gender UnChecked!” I pulled together a group of people who were particularly interested in gender-focused ideas and topics. I put them in a room and asked, “When our audience walks out the door of the concert hall, what do you want them to feel?”
They wanted people to have more questions than answers, so I’ve tried to program stories that highlight a variety of experiences related to gender. Someone said, “I want audience members to say, ‘I didn’t know that was an option,’ ” so people can think about things that have never occurred to them as options

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