Out There :: Symphony Finales

Last week the San Francisco Symphony invited Out There & our #1, Pepi, to their launch party celebrating the Symphony's newest recording, "West Side Story." Music director Michael Tilson Thomas, actor Cheyenne Jackson and other members of the cast celebrated the album's global release in the top-floor Aviary?at Twitter headquarters.

While Jackson (Tony) sang "Maria," Alexandra Silber (Maria) sang "I Feel Pretty," and Jessica Vosk (Anita) sang a few lines of "A Boy Like That" a cappella, the WSS song that most plays in our head is "Somewhere." We've always felt that in its lyric, "There's a place for us," Sondheim and Bernstein were indicating their confidence in a future that includes not only interracial romance, but same-sex equality as well.

The Symphony wraps up its season with the finale to their three-week Benjamin Britten centenary celebration. On June 26, 27 & 29, MTT leads a semi-staged production of Britten's opera "Peter Grimes," led by two Adler Fellow alums, Stuart Skelton and Elza van den Heever. On June 28, a special concert of Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" features video art by Tal Rosner co-commissioned by four orchestras: SFS, New World, LA Phil and Philadelphia. Rosner dedicates each interlude to one of the commissioning cities, using footage of bridges and underpasses from that city as subjects for the visuals. Rosner's work accompanied composer Thomas Ades' "Polaris" in 2011, and will return next season to go with Ades' "In Seven Days."

All of this is enticing stuff. It's no wonder that the SFS and MTT just earned a 2013-14 Award for Adventurous Programming from the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP). Bring it on!

Men in Furs

Author Bill Benemann wrote to us: "I was delighted to see your mention of Peter Stark's new book Astoria in your column [OT, 6/12]. The men that Stark is describing were the 'free trappers,' men who were not working for any particular fur-trading company, but were free to sell their pelts to the highest bidder. Stark and I must have been working from the same primary sources, as what you quote closely follows what I say on pages 70-71 of my 2012 book Men in Eden: William Drummond Stewart and Same Sex Desire in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade (University of Nebraska Press).

"There are so very few of us working to uncover early LGBT American history that any time one of us gets a shout-out, or someone acknowledges that our history didn't start with Stonewall, it's a reason to celebrate." Agreed: let's party!