Do you remember your excitement when you were a child opening your Christmas or birthday present? Or how about getting free tickets to Hamilton ? Multiply that times ten! That’s how excited we are at the Oakland Gay Men’s Chorus to present and perform “Feeling Infinite” for the first time.

The Chorus is committed to creating beautiful music and supporting the performing arts. To celebrate our 20th anniversary, what better way to accomplish both goals than to commission a work!

Eleanor Wikstrom, an Oakland based, prize-winning poet and member of the Oakland Youth Chorus has written a poem called “Infinity,” which captures the “winding streets” and “twinkling skyline” of Oakland. This poem has been set to complementary music by the young, visionary, gay composer Dominick DiOrio. The resulting beautiful introspective piece magnifies not only the original poetry written in Oakland, but will highlight the enduring legacy of our two musical organizations and celebrate the rich cultures within Oakland itself.

As a composer, DiOrio has been hailed for a keenly intelligent, evocative style, which shows “a tour de force of inventive thinking and unique colour” ( Gramophone ).

To quote Dominick:

"I have endeavored to match Eleanor’s poem with music that is not too fast or too slow, with a piano part that never quite settles as it reaches back into the past, struggling to give form to memories that exist no longer as sharp images but as blurry clouds. With this ever-searching quality, I have layered a text setting that is forthright and clear, so that Eleanor’s words are front and center in the musical portrayal. Alternating between quiet and fervent, the music eventually dies away as the chorus sings in the very top of its range with the hushed sounds of falsetto."

DiOrio is currently based in Bloomington, Indiana, where he is an associate professor of music on the conducting faculty at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music

The inaugural performances of “Feeling Infinite” will take place May 18, 2019 at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, and May 19, 2019 at the First Presbyterian Church in Alameda. We feel privileged and are overjoyed to participate in the birth of this beautiful work of art that ties our communities together.

Save your seat at our Pride of the East Bay 20th Anniversary Concert.