This year, the Providence Gay Men’s Chorus is celebrating twenty years of making music! The PGMC was founded in a living room in 1995 when a few guys thought, “wouldn’t it be great to have a gay men’s chorus in Providence?” After just a few months, they knew they had found something good. And now, here we are twenty years later, still making music. Isn’t that wonderful?!!
We are fortunate to have three original members singing with us: Gary Roy, Peter Fournier, and Chris Maxwell. And we are also blessed to have many, many long-term members with multiple years of PGMC membership as well. That’s a testament to not only the vitality of this chorus and the commitment of these individual men, but to the need to have such a chorus at all. One of the tenets in the PGMC vision statement is that “the PGMC strives not only to change the way society thinks about gay men, but to hopefully change society’s perceptions of all diverse people in all parts of the world.”
We’ve come a long way in doing just that – but there is still, sadly, a long way to go…. The words in the first PGMC program still echo true today: “Our choice of music is purposefully diverse. We concentrate on favorite pieces of all eras, including rock and show tunes. We also incorporate pieces of a more formal nature. This diversity helps us grow musically and please the tastes of audiences and chorus members alike. All are welcome!”