1987 - A new director, Pat Parr, and more changes

As the year began, again we were without a director as Rodger Pettyjohn stepped down because he was dealing with HIV and he moved back to New York to be with his family. After another search for a Director, Pat Parr was selected by the membership. He had been a musical director of shows in San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Clara and Yosemite National Park, accompanist for the San Francisco Girls Chorus and the Contra Costa Chorale. Dwight Okamura stayed on as accompanist so with these two leading us I call this time of the next ten years the Pat Parr years.

Our first performance with Pat was the 9th Annual Gay Musical Celebration, which we produced. This concert featured Dick Kramer Gay Men's Chorale, San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band & Twirling Corps, SFGMC, Vocal Minority and us. We also premiered our new small group, Menage. One of the songs we sang was Hand in Hand written by one of our members, Jesse Kane. The concert was reviewed in The Advocate and part of the review said: The singing of Jesse Kane's "Hand in  Hand" provided one of the most moving moments in choral singing I've seen." On the last line, "We're hand in hand reaching out for one another, hand in hand," the chorus sang and signed the words.

Our next performance was San Francisco Lesbian Gay Chorus Rides Again, a show of country and western songs.  We had many guests in this show, including Barbary Coast Cloggers, Fiddlesticks, another small group of LGCSF, Foggy City Dancers, Men About Town, Rawhide II Saddle Tramps, South Bay Stompers and our emcee Danny Williams. Yahoo and we had lots of fun.

Our next performance was as a guest of Joan Baez at her Christmas Concert at the Warfield Theatre on December 17.  We opened the concert with SFGMC. Joan and her sister, Mimi Farina, sang and Linda Tillery, Teresa Trull, Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia and John Kahn of the Grateful Dead, and Emmit Powell and the Gospel Elites also performed. I remember as we were waiting for the curtain to go up we could hear members of the audience yelling for the Grateful Dead. This concert was also broadcast live on KQED. This was quite an evening for us as we sang to a whole new audience.