By June Kamerling
With our upcoming spring concert, “True Colors,” a few weeks away I interviewed Seth Frost and Kelvin Ellis, two baritones in Oakland Gay Men’s Chorus. They both also sing with New Voices Bay Area Trans, Intersex and Genderqueer Chorus, who will be joining OGMC for a few songs.
I asked Seth first, “How did you find OGMC, and what was the chorus like when you first joined?”
“My former voice teacher Eli Conley (www.eliconley.com) told me about OGMC. He knew Billy Sauerland, our previous director before Ben, because Billy did his dissertation on voice education for trans people and Eli is passionate about teaching trans singers. That was in summer 2018, so I’ve been in OGMC for roughly 10 seasons.
I was nervous at first because I hadn’t been a part of a queer chorus before, but everyone was really friendly and welcoming. My first concert was the summer show, kind of Disney-esque. Some of the members were auditioning for small ensembles, and doing all this cool singing/dancing and there were costumes. It was pretty amazing and really fun.
Most memorable was Billy announcing that there would be a giant evil Donald Trump head during the theme song from ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t.”
Seth moved to the Bay Area in 2015 from Lawrence, Kansas. He took piano lessons as a child, and later sang in the civic choir in his home town. He didn’t have traditional voice lessons until he started with Eli. Seth’s mom had played clarinet in high school, so Seth followed suit, but eventually quit band because it conflicted with the Latin class he wanted to take (“I was the wrong kind of nerd for marching band”).
Next I talked to Kelvin, one of the newer members of OGMC.
“I found my way to OGMC in January 2022, through Seth. I grew up in a family of singers and musicians, and I was interested in singing but not at all confident in my voice. I did take piano. Around 2012 I took my first taiko drumming class and loved it. In 2018, after coming out, I found a group called Queer Taiko which I still perform with periodically (taikoandcommunity.org/queertaiko). [Seth says he’s very good.] We do some vocalizing, like shouting words and sounds, and the teacher was very encouraging, so that kind of unlocked my voice finally. Then in 2020, a friend-of-a-friend recommended ‘New Voices.’ I joined on Zoom during lockdown, and it was like part chorus, part support group. When we resumed rehearsing in person, I met Seth. We sat next to each other, and then started carpooling from the East Bay, and… On one of our first dates, Seth was gushing about this other chorus he was in (and on the board of). I was nervous but it sounded super fun and I wanted to finally get into singing. OGMC has been a blast. I feel like I’m finally in the right place at the right time.”
About New Voices
New Voices Bay Area Trans, Intersex and Gender Queer Chorus will be joining Oakland Gay Men’s Chorus in our April 15th and 16th concerts “True Colors”.
New Voices Bay Area TIGQ chorus is run like a (free!) tuition class through San Francisco Community Music Center.
Here is a little about them, including a socially-distanced recording made for the 2021 Billboard Music Awards: https://ybgfestival.org/event/new-voices-bay-area-tigq-chorus/
They’ve been around since 2018 and sing about 4-5 engagements a year. The chorus is comprised of about 30 men, women and a wide variety of people with non-binary gender identities.
Rather than SATB, the voice categories are numbered as 1, 2, 3, 4. Singers are able to move from one part to another as they feel comfortable, and there are often in-between parts, “1.5, 3.5” etc.
The director is Reuben Zellman, one of the first openly trans rabbis in the country (https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuben_Zellman).
“How did it come to be that we’re singing together?”
Seth has been telling each group about the other for a while, trying to be a bridge between the two. Previous director Billy was especially aware of trans issues in the singing community and worked hard to make the chorus a trans-friendly place. When Billy left, Seth made it his job to bridge the two choruses. Brian Tognotti, on the artistic committee of OGMC, asked Seth who to talk to, and Seth got him in touch with Reuben.
In our time talking, we discovered that Kelvin’s parents were in The Berkeley Broadway Singers chorus with me many years ago (small world).
