G.L. E-CLUB Contact Artemis through their website,
artemissingers.org, if you’d like to join. The group practices on Thursday nights.
Photo: Ruth Clark
“No, she wouldn’t be invited!” cracks Loraine Edwalds. Fortunately, there’s little chance of former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin seeking membership to the “lesbian feminist” chorus Artemis. Edwalds, a two-decade vet of the 20-member group, notes, “Anyone straight or gay can sing with us, but you do have to be lesbian friendly.”
The 29-year-old troupe, the first lesbian chorus in the United States, exclusively performs music written or arranged by women. In November, the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame recognized its contribution to the city by inducting Artemis. “I didn’t know until the ceremony that Chicago’s the only city in the country with a LGBT Hall of Fame,” says board member Ruth Clark, who lives with Edwalds and has been with Artemis off and on since 1984. “The only downside is that we got in after our dear friend Michaeline Chvatal passed.” Chvatal, who, in February, succumbed to breast cancer at age 60, was there from the beginning; in recent years, she had lobbied for the group’s inclusion in the LGBT Hall of Fame.
In the late 1970s, when Artemis formed, women looking to assemble with other women had few options aside from bars, Edwalds says. “For a lot of people, that’s a terrible way to meet others.” She found Artemis a nurturing, creative way to meet other women.
Following a successful ’06 performance at the Gay Games, and before it hosts the local Sister Singers Festival in 2010, the ensemble has been concentrating on Saturday 6, when it will perform a wide swatch of world music that includes sounds from the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas, including a song set to a reading of Eleanor Roosevelt’s words. Clark recites a line for us, which she feels speaks to those ladies still afraid to come out: “You gain courage and strength and confidence every time you look fear in the face.”
The men are also busy this weekend. Robert Basile, 56, the sole remaining founding member of the Windy City Gay Chorus, waxes nostalgic for the choir he joined when he was 27 years old. “We’re all bald headed now,” Basile says.
According to Basile, when the WCGC began in ’79, it fought for gay rights, preached pride to those reluctant to come out and attempted to promote a new image of gay citizens. “We’re not all silly queens out there,” says Basile, adding that the chorus’s message has become more mainstream.
Yet its music remains less populist. Basile boasts of WCGC’s artistic reach; the 27-man gang has traveled to New York’s Carnegie and Avery Fisher halls and performed at home in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. But the rigorous classical, or what Basile calls “longhair,” side of its image sometimes loses the popularity contest to the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus, which split off from the WCGC in 1983. (Basile lovingly calls the competing group a “song-and-dance chorus.”)
Covering all the bases, the WCGC’s upcoming program offers light holiday fare alongside works by Franz Biebl and Benjamin Britten. The latter, who courageously introduced gay themes in his pre–sexual revolution operas, most certainly would’ve appreciated what both the WCGC and Artemis have achieved.
Artemis perform at Berry United Methodist Church on Saturday 6. WCGC hit Center on Halstead on Saturday 6, Sunday 7.