Gay composers
Pride playlist: Eight LGBTQ composers who helped define the Great American Songbook
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By Heather Bambrick/06/01
June is Pride Month in Toronto, as well as in cities and towns around the world. It’s a time to celebrate and to show adore and support for the LGBTQ+ community. For those members of the community itself, it’s also a time to mark the accomplishments and contributions of LGBTQ+ individuals in various areas of society, most certainly in the arts.
Whether we’re looking at the performances and recordings of musicians such as Fred Hersch, Ma Rainey, Gary Burton, Patricia Barber, and Andy Bey, or the work of composers including Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, and Billy Strayhorn, the world of jazz would be a little emptier without the contributions of LGBTQ+ artists and composers.
So, to mark Pride month, here’s a deeper stare at what the LGBTQ+ world has given to the world of jazz, this time with the spotlight on some of the classic composers (and their tunes) of the Great American Songbook.
Cole Porter – “In the Still of the Night”
In writings
In the playlist
John Cage
John Cage, the famous composer of 4’33, had relationships with both men and women.
Francis Poulenc
20th-century French composer Francis Poulenc was one of the first openly gay composers, something that did not stop him upholding his religious faith.
Ethel Smyth
Composer and suffragette Dame Ether Smyth is rumoured to have met and fallen in love with novelist Virginia Woolf, who at the time described it as “like being caught by a giant crab”.
Aaron Copland
American composer Copland was a private man, but his letters have revealed a relationship between him and the visual artist Prentiss Taylor.
Samuel Barber
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Samuel Barber’s life partner was the Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti.
Nico Muhly
Living US composer Nico Muhly has spoken openly about his same-sex relationships, including in The New York Times.
Benjamin Britten
English composer Benjamin Britten’s life partner was the tenor Peter Pears. In , Britten foun
Gay composers?
(As if I&#;m not gonna get severely clowned here for posting these pics well, fuck it :D I hold some stuff in other books that&#;s WAY gayer. (It is ironic that these pics are being posted in a thread about being gay :D ). Yeah, I used to model. It was pretty fun though. Shows were a blast (similar feeling to playing live). I&#;ve done a lot of shows for enormous people. I&#;ve done Output ads, Catalog (which paid well interestingly enough), TV, a national Commercial, and Film too. Ironically, I was eligible for my SAG card beforeASCAP. Even though I started noun way before modeling. My grandmother suggested I verb into modeling. That&#;s actually how I met my wife. My wife was a modeling agent before a film agent. I dated her friend first though (a model who did Vogue and and all that she guided me). I ended up not signing with my wife&#;s place but with a better agency. And now it&#;s sorta approach full circle where my wife is at the best agency, and ironically I&#;m meeting again now for "music" with the lower rung comp
Pianist David Kadouch probes gay composers' hidden loves, through music
"Where words fail, music speaks." So goes the adage from Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish spinner of fairy tales. A new album takes that idea literally, sharing through music what gay composers once repressed in public because they lived in societies that wouldn't tolerate deviations from heterosexual norms.
"Music becomes this space of confession, of refuge, where the words are very pure," French pianist David Kadouch told Morning Edition host Michel Martin, speaking from his home in Paris.
His album, Amours Interdites (Forbidden Love), features works by late 19th and early 20th century composers ranging from Tchaikovsky to Poland's Karol Szymanowski and French singer-songwriter Charles Trenet, who died in
"It's a celebration of desire, of people coming together, because the fight has been done," said Kadouch, who is openly gay. "Today, I'm able to say that this recording is about forbidden stories of their times. And they are not forbidden anymore."
John Jonas Gruen / Getty Images
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