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Creator
Miller, Gary (Conductor)
Call number
JPB 24-8
Physical description
9.33 linear feet (24 boxes, 1 tube). 75 audio recordings. 19 video recordings
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Gary Miller New York City Gay Men's Chorus papers, JPB 24-8. Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Repository
Music Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.Restrictions apply

Gary Miller (born 1946) served as the first director of the New York City Gay Men's Chorus (NYCGMC) from 1980 to 1998. During his tenure, the Chorus performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, toured Europe multiple times, and commissioned dozens of compositions. The collection chronicles Miller's administrative and creative involvement with the chorus from 1980 to 2015 via audiovisual recordings, clippings, correspondence, newsletters, photographs, playbills, programs, and scores.

Biographical/historical information

Gary Miller (1946- ) was born in York, Pennsylvania. He received a bachelor's degree in music education from Lebanon Valley College and a master's degree in choral conducting from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he moved to New York City and became a public school teacher. He joined the fledgling New York City Gay Men's Chorus when he was thirty-three years old. The first iteration of the New York City Gay Men's Chorus (NYCGMC) was founded in 1979 by director Jonathan Fey and manager Edward Dryer Weaver. Eighty men gathered at Washington Square United Methodist Church for the group's first rehearsal on September 17, 1979, but membership declined to about twenty by November. Weaver withdrew from the organization and retained the rights to the New York City Gay Men's Chorus name. The remaining members of the original group voted to change their name to the Big Apple Gay Men's Chorus.

A second NYCGMC emerged in January of 1980 with seventeen members under interim director Mario Gonzalez. Miller joined this group in April. Three weeks after Miller joined, Gonzalez quit, and the chorus promoted Miller to the role of music director. In June, Miller heard about the Big Apple Gay Men's Chorus' search for a new director. He applied for the position with the recommendation that both choruses merge. Each chorus approved the merger at separate rehearsals. The new New York City Gay Men's Chorus had sixty members.

In December 1980, the NYCGMC performed their debut holiday concert to a standing-room only crowd in the Great Hall at the Cooper Union. The 150-member chorus made their Carnegie Hall debut on December 8, 1981, and at the beginning of their third season, they debuted at the John F. Kennedy Center on September 12, 1982. The NYCGMC was one of the founding members of the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA) in 1982. Miller was elected GALA president in 1984.

In October of 1980, the NYCGMC participated in a community memorial service for two men killed by a drive-by shooter at the Ramrod gay bar in Greenwich Village. The Ramrod memorial service had demonstrated to the NYCGMC that they could fulfill a role in the community's grieving and healing process. The importance of this role would become apparent a few years later during the AIDS epidemic. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, weekly rehearsals would begin with announcements of members who had passed away since the previous gathering. The NYCGMC sang remembrances during rehearsals and performed at memorials for their members; during one particular weekend, they performed three. By 1992, the chorus had lost fifty members to the AIDS crisis. By the time of the twenty-fifth anniversary in 2004, 120 members had died. The names of these members are listed on an "In Memoriam" page on the NYCGMC's website.

Miller served as director from 1980 to 1998, returning for one season in 2005. Under his leadership, the music ensemble also operated as a social and political organization. Their mission statement was to make music for the education and enrichment of the gay community, equal parts musical, social, and political. In 1984, Miller successfully led the fight for gay and lesbian choruses to be recognized by the American Choral Directors Association using their official names, including the words "gay" and "lesbian." In 1985, Miller led a boycott of C.F. Peters Music Corp., after they published a new work commissioned by the NYCGMC that deliberately eliminated the name of the chorus from the composer's dedication.

During Miller's eighteen years as director, the NYCGMC commissioned forty works; performed twenty-six concerts at Lincoln Center; forty-two at Carnegie Hall; led three European tours; and became the first gay musical ensemble to receive a recording contract with Pro Arte for 1984's Festival of Song. Miller's tenure oversaw the recording of four additional albums: New York, New York (1984), Christmas Comes Anew (1991), Love Lives On (1991), and Look to the Rainbow (1998).

Miller met his romantic partner, Daniel Starr, at a party hosted by Chorus member Neil Bickford in 1984. Upon retiring from the GMC, Miller resumed his teaching career at the Ethical Culture School.

Scope and arrangement

The Gary Miller New York City Gay Men's Chorus papers date from 1980 to 2015, and contain Chorus memorabilia and ephemera from Miller's time as director. The collection is arranged into three series comprising Administrative files; Concerts and Performances; and Scores. The papers chart his perspective of the Chorus from its founding year, but is not an exhaustive representation of the Chorus' administrative organization.

The collection is represented via clippings, correspondence, newsletters, photographs, playbills, posters, programs, and scores. Programs from affiliated organizations, such as the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Inc., and the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA Choruses), are also included. Scores and playbills from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center make up the bulk of the collection.

The Gary Miller New York City Gay Men's Chorus papers are arranged in three series:

  • Series I: Administrative
    1981-2015
    4.96 linear feet (10 boxes). 5 audio_recordings. 6 video_recordings

    The Administrative series dates from 1981 to 2015 and contains the Chorus' 25th Anniversary journal, budget projections, clippings, correspondence, newsletters, photographs, taped interviews and media appearances, and a small amount of personal photographs and awards related to concerts, recording projects, and tours by the Chorus that Miller organized while serving as music director. Programs from events hosted by the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Inc. and the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA Choruses) are also included. The series also holds a small amount of personal photographs which are held in the Gary Miller file.

    Correspondence with recording studios, with the organizers of the Gay Games, and members of the Chorus' board are present. Miller is the author of the majority of these letters. Budget items cover the proposed and actual budgets for European tours and concerts.

    Miller collected news clippings, photographs, and other ephemera related to each season from 1982 to 1987 in annual scrapbooks. These scrapbooks, which typically begin with the annual Christmas concert, contain concert announcements, reviews, candid photographs from rehearsals and retreats, and letters of support from community members.

    Miller's subject file also includes professional and civic recognition of his work with the Chorus. The New York City Council twice recognized Miller's contributions to LGBT+ culture and community with separate proclamations. The first is an undated proclamation from C. Virginia Fields, Borough President of Manhattan; the second is signed by Councilmember Thomas K. Duane, and declared May 7, 1998 to be "Maestro Miller Day." Two copies of Miller's keynote address to the 1998 GALA Chorus Leadership Conference are also included.

    Of particular note is the full run of the Chorus' newsletter, Chorus Lines, dated from 1982 to 1993. Each issue contains letters from Miller, articles of interest from other publications, reviews about Chorus concerts, letters from former or sick Chorus members, a monthly calendar, photographs, and cartoons.

  • Series II: Concerts and Performances
    1980-2006
    2.33 linear feet (6 boxes, 1 tube). 70 audio_recordings. 13 video_recordings

    The Concerts and Performances series spans 1980 to 2006 and includes concert photographs; posters; programs; and recordings of live performances, rehearsals, and studio recordings.

    Playbills make up the bulk of this series. Miller collected the official programs for every concert the Chorus performed at Carnegie Hall or the Lincoln Center, beginning with the debut performance in December 1980. Additional posters, playbills, and programs for tours, performances during Pride month, and collaborative concerts with other LGBT+ choruses are also present. Files are arranged chronologically by season, which starts at the annual Christmas concert and runs through autumn of the following year.

    Concert posters include a 1982 Valentine's Day concert poster with the Windy City Gay Chorus at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall; a poster for the German leg of the 1991 European tour; and a 1998 poster for a performance with the Seattle Men's Chorus at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, Spain. Of particular note is a framed concert poster of the Chorus' debut performance at Carnegie Hall. The cover of the Carnegie program is pasted onto the frame's backing paper. Members of the Chorus who sang at this concert filled the backing paper with signatures, congratulatory messages, well wishes, and doodles.

    Also held here are audio and video recordings of the Chorus' Christmas concerts, performances during the 1988 and 1991 European tours, studio recordings of Look to the Rainbow (1998), and performances on media outlets including NPR, WQXR-FM, Sunday Today, and CBS News Nightwatch. Hidden Legacies (1993), Celebrating Stonewall (1994), and Side by Side by Side (1997) feature joint performances with the Los Angeles Gay Men's Chorus, the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, Seattle Men's Chorus, and the Windy City Gay Chorus. A 1986 NYCGMC performance with the Twin Cities Men's Chorus at that year's GALA Festival and a joint 1996 performance with the Anna Crusis Women's Choir at Alice Tully Hall are also present.

    Of particular note is the live concert recording of Friends for Life (1991) at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. Soprano Roberta Alexander, pianist Dean X. Johnson, the Rijkspolitiekapel (Dutch National Police Band) conducted by Nico Boom, and tenor Bruce Sellers performed with the NYCGMC. Recordings are arranged chronologically with undated recordings filed at the end.

    There is also a small amount of photographs and recordings of unidentified concerts and performances.

  • Series III: Scores
    1980-2003
    4.33 linear feet (13 boxes)

    Series III is dated from 1980 to 2003. Over one hundred scores and compositions that Miller collected for the New York City Gay Men's Chorus are held here, two-thirds of which were commissioned by the NYCGMC or other LGBT+ choruses. Works commissioned by the Chorus include works by Roger Bourland, John David Earnest, Dean X Johnson, Libby Larsen, Larry Moore, Mark Riese, Robert Thomas Seeley, and Conrad Susa. Many of the scores are annotated by Miller. Some compositions for piano, horn, or orchestral accompaniment are also included.

    Pieces commissioned in memory of Chorus members and loved ones are noted on the item level.

    Some loose pages and unidentified pieces are held at the end of the series. Diazo print copies are present and are housed separately from other prints. These are noted on the item level.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Donated by Gary Miller in 2023.

Processing information

Processed by Em Longan in 2024.

Using the collection

Location

Music Division
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498
Third Floor

Access restrictions

Inquiries regarding audio and video materials in the collection may be directed to the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound (recordedsound@nypl.org). Audio and video materials will be subject to preservation evaluation and migration prior to access.