Golden Gate Performing Arts

Golden Gate Performing Arts, doing business as the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, is a choir comprising more than 300 active volunteer singers. The group performs at major concert halls and community events an average of 20 times each year. It frequently commissions new work, serves Bay Area youth through its RHYTHM (Reaching Youth Through Music) program, and tours nationally. The chorus and its subset ensembles perform for more than 25,000 people each year. In addition, it recently established the Chan National Queer Arts Center, based in its historic four-story facility in San Francisco, to provide a hub for LGBTQ+ arts activity and related advocacy. Support for the Chan National Queer Arts Center advances the Performing Arts Program’s Communities strategy.

Golden Gate Performing Arts, better known as the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, is a choir comprising more than 300 active volunteer singers. The group performs at major concert halls and community events an average of 20 times each year. It frequently commissions new work, serves Bay Area youth through its music program for grades 6 through 12, and tours nationally. The chorus and its subset ensembles perform for more than 25,000 people each year. In addition, it operates the National LGBTQ Center for the Arts, a historic four-story facility in San Francisco for LGBTQ arts and related advocacy activity. Support for Golden Gate Performing Arts advances the Performing Arts Program’s Communities strategy.

Golden Gate Performing Arts Inc., better known as the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus (SFGMC), first sang on the steps of San Francisco City Hall at an impromptu vigil the day Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were killed in 1978. Over the past thirty years the Chorus has performed at Carnegie Hall, The Sydney Opera House, released 19 albums and become the pre-eminent cultural organization in the Bay Area’s LGBT community. Comprised of 200 singers aged 18-80 (some nurtured through SFGMC’s GLAM Youth Choir and others selected through an annual open-audition), the chorus performs 9 major concerts each year at venues ranging from Davies Symphony Hall, to the Pride Celebration’s Mainstage, and at 50+ community events from senior citizen centers, public schools and the pitcher’s mound at AT&T Park. Chorus members, under the direction of Dr. Kathleen McGuire since 2000, rehearse weekly to perform a diverse repertoire including classical oratorios, updated Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, the Elton John songbook and campy interpretations of holiday standards. One of several dozen bay area gay and lesbian choirs, the SFGMC brings professional instruction and training to an arts group made up of amateurs and, through their del Castro ensemble, presents chorale music by and for San Francisco’s Spanish speaking gay community. First time funding for the SFGMC will bolster organizational capacity by securing the services of their first full time executive director (Mr. Teddy Witherington, hired in 2007), and enabling him to solicit more foundation support, currently making up a very modest 8% of the organization’s annual $750,000 budget. (New, $180,000/3; 5% of program budget)