For Immediate Release:  August 1, 2010

Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles
Conducted by Dominic Gregorio
Presents “Sure On This Shining Night”
Including World Premiere of “The End of it All”
For Choir and Electronica by John Tejada Preformed Live with Tejada

Saturday, August 21, 2010 at Walt Disney Concert Hall

LOS ANGELES, CA – The renowned Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles (GMCLA) – a leading artistic force, staunch advocate of civil and human rights and first gay men’s choir to perform for a sitting president (Bill Clinton) – presents the world premiere of “The End of It All” by noted electronic artist and DJ John Tejada, on Saturday, August 21, 2010, at Walt Disney Concert Hall.  Commissioned by GMCLA and written for choir and electronica, it will feature the composer on electronica.  Also on the program are a selection of great opera choruses, a range of classic contemporary choral works and the GMCLA’s poignant and critically acclaimed Harvey Milk Schools Project, a mix of music and spoken word spotlighting the life of civil rights icon Harvey Milk to promote equality and acceptance and raise awareness about anti-gay bullying in schools.  This marks the choir’s third performance in Disney Hall.

The concert, conducted by Interim Artistic Director Dominic Gregorio, opens with such contemporary choral classics as David Conte’s “Invocation and Dance,” for choir, four-hand piano, and glockenspiel, praised by the New York Times as “a sparkling hymn to life,” and “Sure On This Shining Night” by Morten Lauridsen, a lyrical setting of James Agee’s well known love poem, and “Lux Aurumque” by Eric Whitacre, whose compositions have been described as “works of unearthly beauty and imagination.”

Other contemporary compositions include “In The Space of Now” by Kevin Robison, commissioned by GMCLA in 2004; and Jonathan Wesley Oliver, Jr., a compelling work by singer/songwriter Tom Brown written in 1988 about the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which is the largest piece of community folk art in the world.

Also featured are selections from operas by Verdi, Bizet, Rossini and Donizetti, among them “Amore d fede eternal” from Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia; “Possente amor mi chiama” from Verdi’s Rigoletto; and “Fra poco a me ricovero… Oh meschina!” from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.

In addition, GMCLA highlights its poignant and critically acclaimed Harvey Milk Schools Project.  Presented by the Chorus in Los Angeles-area schools, it is a mix of music and spoken word focusing on the life of civil rights icon Harvey Milk to promote equality and acceptance and raise awareness about anti-gay bullying in schools.  The choir notes that every year, over 85% of LGBT students in American schools are physically or verbally abused.

Introduced for the first time on the main stage will be the GMCLA Alive Music Project Youth Chorus, comprised of local students, which will perform several numbers then join GMCLA for a medley featuring such hits as “True Colors” and “He Ain’t Heavy.”

Tickets for general seating range from $25 to $80 and can be purchased online through www.ticketmaster.com.  VIP tickets, which include a pre-show reception in Disney Hall Founders’ Room are $150 and are available by calling (800) MEN SING or www.gmcla.org.  The Walt Disney Concert Hall is located at 111 South Grand Avenue at First Street in downtown Los Angeles.

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Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, DOMINIC GREGORIO is the Interim Artistic Director of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles who previously served for two years as Assistant Conductor.  He is a Doctor of Musical Arts student in Choral Music at the University of Southern California, where he conducted the Apollo Men’s Choir, was Assistant Conductor of the Chamber Singers, and taught courses in choral conducting.  After graduating with a Triple Masters Degree in Music (Choral Conducting, Voice Performance, Music History) from Temple University in Philadelphia, Mr. Gregorio moved to Taiwan for one year and served as the Assistant Conductor of the Taipei Philharmonic Foundation Choirs, while also learning Mandarin Chinese, on a grant through the Canadian government. Mr. Gregorio is the former Artistic Director of Singing Out, The Toronto Lesbian and Gay Choir and former conductor of the University of Guelph Women’s Choir.  He has won numerous awards including the Presser Music Award, which enabled him to live and study for a semester in Vienna, Austria, the G. Nixon Leadership Award, the Carrow Teaching Award, the Edward Johnson Foundation Award, and Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities.  Recently Mr. Gregorio was a semi-finalist in the ACDA Graduate Student Conducting Competition.  His principal teachers are Jo-Michael Scheibe, Larry Livingston, William Dehning, Alan Harler and James Jordan.

For 32 years the GAY MEN’S CHORUS OF LOS ANGELES has built an international reputation for musical excellence while remaining deeply rooted in service to the Los Angeles community and promoting civil rights, tolerance and acceptance though music.  Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the last important links to a glorious tradition in music,” critics call the choir “remarkable” and note “GMCLA truly shines.”  It is one of the largest and most influential men’s choirs in the nation and is the first gay men’s choir to perform for a sitting president – William Jefferson Clinton. In March 2010, GMCLA became one of only a handful of organizations ever to perform in the California Assembly chamber in the state’s capitol when they sang “America the Beautiful” and a rendition of  “Brand New Day” from the Broadway musical The Wiz for the swearing-in ceremony for new Assembly Speaker John Perez, California’s first openly gay Assembly Speaker.  In addition to presenting concerts each season in Southern California at Glendale’s Alex Theatre and elsewhere, GMCLA tours nationally and internationally, most recently in 2006 when the Chorus visited Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, where it helped found South America’s first LGBT Chorus. The 230-member choir has released 14 compact discs to date, commissioned more than 300 new works and arrangements and appeared frequently on national television programs such as Will & Grace and Six Feet Under. The Chorus membership donates over 60,000 volunteer hours annually to make GMCLA’s mission of musical excellence and community partnership a reality.  Through GMCLA’s Alive Music Project (AMP), and AMP’s highly regarded component the Harvey Milk Schools Project, the Chorus uses song to teach acceptance and equality at schools to overcome prejudice.  The program actively promotes the reality that our community’s struggle for equal rights is not only universal, but is also an issue that has and can affect any group of people who find themselves in the minority.

Normally associated with his peers in Techno from Detroit, Europe and elsewhere in the US and the world, JOHN TEJADA has embraced electronic music as a personal frontier, expanding on his formidable resume as a Techno recording artist, as producer and remixer, DJ, and label owner.  He has showcased his DJ skills around the globe, traveling to more than 20 countries to play at such prestigious festivals as Movement (formerly The Detroit Electronic Music Festival), Sonar Festival in Spain and Tokyo, Dance Valley in the Netherlands, Sync Festival in Greece, and Mutek Mexico.  He has also performed at internationally known spaces such as Fabric in London, Yellow in Tokyo, Rex Club in Paris, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and many others.  His musically formative years were steeped in classical music, growing up in a family of performing artists – his mother is a soprano, and his father is a conductor/composer – which then widened to include hip hop, DJing and finally, electronic music.  Known for crafting a brand of subtle, musical techno, his recorded output ranges across tempo and genre lines, from chilled out affairs with spacious arrangements to pulsating, densely layered, deeply energetic tracks that work magnificently in the hands of DJs as well as on the home stereo.  Earlier on, his music found release on labels such as A13, Multiplex and Generation R&S.  In 1996, he established his own imprint, Palette Recordings, in Los Angeles.

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