FUN STORY

OK, you clicked on the Fun Story hoping for a fun story. Like my life, it’s pretty long. But, like my life, it’s far from boring. Hang in there.

Just like you, there are things in my life that have not been fun. But the big picture of life has been great fun and the fun things far outweigh and outnumber those that don’t fall in the fun category. So, the fun part rests more in the manner in which the story is told rather than the content. 

Fun or not fun, life has never been boring! This is the Cliff’s Notes version. The “official” version is in the next tab. The really long version is in my memoire. Like most folks, there is a Big Tim, the one who is completely at home in public and on stage. And there’s a Little Tim. Raising dogs, cleaning the house, being quiet. Not so different from most people, but the contrast between the two is most likely more dramatic!

Let’s start with Little Tim.  Precocious, overachieving, people-pleasing, dressed up, funny.  My first performances were standing on the piano bench singing for captive guests in our home. I started on that stage and never got down! I sang a lot and was at church every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening and sometimes on Monday for door to door visitation to call on wayward prospects. 

My brother and I were raised in a prize-winning, model Southern Baptist home.  Mom and Dad were both professional Baptists. My Father was the Vice President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for 30 years.  My Mother was a singer and taught voice at the seminary’s school of music at the same time. She also sang all over the world as a gospel singer. And she was the funniest person on the planet. She was the daughter of a U.S. Congressman and held the title of “Queen of Everything” until she passed. At that time, and this is the truth, my Dad gave me the painting with that written on it! He thought I was definitely the one to get it. 

For the first 35 years of my life, the Baptist Church was the cloak that swaddled me tightly since birth. That was the theme of Life #1 in Tale of Two Tims.

In spite of the tight parameters, it went well. OK, even better than well. It included lots of schooling, lots of professional singing, a lovely wife, two perfect children, sacred albums, singing around the world, four degrees, including one from Salzburg, Austria. I grabbed the brass ring with a full-time opera career in Switzerland. The over achiever was killing it. Of course, I look at that history and am incredibly proud and grateful for all of it. After returning home from Switzerland, I settled in as Assistant Professor at Houston Baptist University and Associate Minister of Music at First Baptist Church. Fun. Busy fun.

It was a perfect life and falling apart.

I thought I could live the lie pretending to be heterosexual.  After all, as an opera singer, I had trained in acting. My oft stated “sexual preference” was heterosexual.  From the ages 19 – 35, I sought professional help of Christian psychiatrists and counselors. Many times I found myself during the ‘Invitation’ or ‘altar call’ at the end the services, weeping and asking God to “take this cup from me” and allow me to be straight.  Maybe just one more verse of “Just As I Am? No. He did not remove it. It was many years before I finally accepted the fact that He did not change me because I was already whole and perfect and a homosexual.

So, at 35, with the perfect career, perfect family, perfect life, I could not take it one more day.  I came out. It was not about a desire to live the “homosexual lifestyle,” which I knew almost nothing about. It was about telling the truth.  The year was 1986.  

Super Cliff Notes: I lost everything in one way or another, except 2: music and humor.  I would not trade any of it, not one day, except the pain I caused my family, not watching my children grow up, holding them, reading them stories, watching them go off to school and grow into beautiful young adults.

When I came out, Mom and Dad – the super Baptists - asked what they did to make me queer.  I told them absolutely nothing. What they did was instill a deep sense of telling the truth that would not allow me to live a lie anymore.  I am not sure they were happy with that answer. Fun.

Life #2 started in the same manner as #1. Fresh, new, clueless, fragile, not one physical thing that was mine, and dependent on the kindness of strangers. Gay strangers. Fun

A year after coming out, I heard there was a gay men’s chorus in Dallas looking for a conductor.  I had no idea there was such a thing, but I needed a job to pay child support. I took the part-time job with the Turtle Creek Chorale, all 40-some singers, and was a full-time temporary secretary (Dr. Kelly girl) on the side to make ends meet.  The rest is a dream. I stayed there, conducting those wonderful men, for the next 20 years. FUN!!! I arrived as the AIDS epidemic was taking off. I had tried to escape the moniker of minister and here I was doing it to a level I had never imagined in the church. Our losses where unimaginable. But we learned what “church” was as we took care of each other in every possible way, loving, learning and grieving.

Those 20 years were magical. We found ourselves climbing mountains we never even knew were there. Accolades and Awards abounded. Rover 30 recordings, 2 documentaries, multiple appearances at national choral conventions. They may have been heady years, but our feet were held firmly on the ground by the losses around us and the challenges before us – equal rights for our LGBTQ+ community! We did our best. Big, important fun. 

In 1989, I co-founded The Women’s Chorus of Dallas, and in 2008, co-founded Resounding Harmony, a mixed chorus based solely on choral philanthropy. They are both still alive and well. 

After the Turtle Creek Chorale, I was on the adjunct faculty at Southern Methodist University. I had written 6 books on choral music and presenting workshops. I was hired as Artistic Director of the non-profit organization Hope for Peace and Justice and hired as the first Artistic Director in Residence for GALA Choruses (LGBTQ choruses of North America). Really busy fun.

Three years later, the position of Artistic Director for the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus became available. Well, there was nothing to do but risk it all and apply and audition. I got the job. I began in January 2011. 

Life’s rocket continued its trajectory of FUN and fabulous. It’s San Francisco after all.  It was the right time, the right place for all of us.

It has been a time of meteoric growth. Of great joy. Of unfathomable music making and community building. Our challenges are different here. It is not a challenge to be “out” as it was in Dallas. (understatement). But what being in this city does is throw you right into the middle of gay mecca. All of a sudden you are a spokesmodel for all things gay. It’s amazing, but daunting. 

The chorus’ first public appearance in 1978 was at the candlelight vigil for Harvey Milk. He loved music and activism and we feel we received the baton from him to carry on his legacy.

We have worked hard. Commissioning important works for everyone by Stephen Schwartz, Ola Gjeilo, Stephen Flaherty, John Corigliano, Andrew Lippa, Jake Heggie, Stephen Sondheim  and so many more on topics of Coming Out, Teen Suicide, Gender fluidity, and gay men in the Holocaust. 

We took just under 300 singers to Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, North and South Carolina to bolster them in times of deep discrimination against them. It resulted in the Documentary, Gay Chorus Deep South. It had its premiere at Tribeca where it won the Audience Favorite Award! It is streaming on Paramout+.

One of our most important initiatives was building an Artist Portal at the National AIDS Memorial Grove honoring the members of SFGMC and others lost to the first pandemic we would live through. Finally, in our spare time, we purchased a building for SFGMC’s home and are creating the Chan National Queer Arts Canter. 

Then there was the 2nd pandemic of our lives – COVID. The chorus immediately pivoted to virtual singing viewed by millions worldwide. One of those million happened when the far right took offense to one of our songs. The humor and sarcasm was lost on them and their horrible vitriol went viral. Fun? Not so much, but ultimately, worth it to have poked the bear so thoroughly.

In 2021, I decided it was time to retire from SFGMC. 2022 was the perfect time. We would be coming out of COVID, I would have finished 11 ½ years of my planned 10 (before COVID added the extra) and it would be 35 years of conducting LGBTQ+ choruses. 

So, it happened. It was glorious. On July 13 2022 I had the most spectacular sendoff imaginable. The concert was accompanied by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra! It was a week of parties and tributes and friends and family.  And now, I’ve moved to Portland, OR! I’m “retired.”

That’s a short summary of the career in a nutshell. Well, 1700 words.

One more thing. I would be remiss in telling my story without this personal note, I mentioned 2 perfect children, Corianna and Judson. In October, 2018, Corianna died suddenly. We have been regrouping as a family. There is nothing that can ever compare to that. But there is great joy in 4 Grandgirls: Clara Skye, Eden Mae, Ivy Hope and Cora Rose. 

After all of these years, there are two things that still remain: music and humor.

Those two things, and family, and a passion to make the world a better place make life exciting and, yes, fun!

That’s all for now.

professional

Artistic Director
Turtle Creek Chorale
August 1987 – August 2007 (20 years 1 month)
Conductor Emeritus