The gays must go on.
Despite a $25,000 federal grant cut to the Philadelphia Orchestra’s annual Pride Concert, hundreds of queer Philadelphians and straight allies packed into the Kimmel Center’s Marian Anderson Hall for the free music celebration this week.
“This is the Philadelphia orchestra’s fourth annual pride celebration and concert,” Danielle Allen, vice president of education and community for the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts, told Billy Penn before the concert. “Unfortunately, like so many other nonprofits, we lost critical funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.”
The cuts are part of broader actions precipitated by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Despite this loss, Allen said the organization “decided to still trudge forward.” The orchestra received a large matching grant from a donor, Dr. James Dougherty, to keep the night afloat.
“Our friends from the LGBTQIA plus community are people, just like we all are people, and they are musicians and they are entertainers,” Allen said. “We’re making music together. We’re bringing joy to our community.”
A Pride concert and celebration
The evening’s music celebrated local LGBTQ+ choirs, queer performers, gay composers and modern queer anthems.
The night’s conductor and music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, donated his fee for the evening’s concert.
“In these times of uncertainty and change and ridiculousness, we are here to bring people together through the power of music to create understanding, to speak to the human spirit,” Nézet-Séguin said. “Tonight and every night, we hold true to our values to be authentic, collaborative, exceptional and inclusive.”
Nézet-Séguin hosted the evening with Martha Graham Cracker, “the tallest, hairiest drag queen in the word,” according to the program. This was their second pride concert together. Graham Cracker hosted the show with Nézet-Séguin at its debut four years ago.
The queen wore a regal, gold Elizabethan dress with a frilly collar and cut panel in the front to show off her legs (which were indeed wonderfully hairy). The two bantered, acting out small bits and playfully flirting between pieces, and reminded the audience of the night’s importance.
“What makes these traditions so incredible is how we continue them year after year, pushing forward no matter what,” Graham Cracker said. “Really, the path of progress can feel very slow, like we’re being pushed backwards at times.”
“Indeed, the path of progress is never straight,” she said coyly, pausing for applause. “It’s gay. It’s lesbian. It’s bisexual … It’s trans.”
In a night that could have been filled with anger and fear, Nézet-Séguin and Graham Cracker set a celebratory tone filled with joy, heart and defiance.
The concert featured four local choirs: the ANNA Crusis Feminist Choir, the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus, the Philadelphia Voices of Pride and the Transcendent Choir of Philadelphia. Each group embraces LGBTQ+ voices. The singers all sat above the orchestra wearing bright jewel tones.
“I’m a proud mom,” said Brenda Dyer, who came to support her son in the Transcendent Choir, which is Philly’s first and only trans and gender-expansive community choir. “This year there’s been a lot of attacks … against people’s right to be who they are, and as the mother of a trans son, it’s worrisome,” she said. “He’s an adult, but he’s in a place in Philly where he’s safe, he has a good community and he has a good job.”
Sponsoring Pride
Pride feels a little different this year.
Corporate sponsors for Pride events, which were once a given when June rolled around, now aren’t a sure bet.
Organizations this year are more hesitant to back parades and queer events, and the queer community has also been less likely to accept sponsorship, which can feel opportunistic or purely promotional. And now, with NEA funding restructured, finding money to fuel LGBTQ+ celebrations can take more creativity than it has in recent years.
The orchestra’s pride event kicked off with a pre-concert filled with drag artists like Lisa Lisa, Hannibal Lickher, Mister Right and That Queen. Booths for local LGBTQ+ organizations lined the walls, like Bebashi Transition to Hope, an organization that provides healthcare access and HIV-related care to low-income Black and Brown Philadelphians.
“We at Bebashi have seen firsthand how cuts to both federal funding and corporate sponsorships of LGBTQ-oriented organizations have left a lot of underrepresented minority communities at risk,” said Ethan Jewett, the organization’s director of development. “We have lost funding for some of our core programs as a result of the current funding environment. We’ve had that happen pretty quickly and have had to adjust. And yet at the same time, we’re very resilient, very persistent.”
Despite the financial changes, there were many aspects of the night that felt like Pride as usual. Attendees still showed up in their brightest and boldest colors and ordered drinks. They danced to pre-show performances, wore glitter and walked a rainbow carpet.
“Keep drinking the water, keep dancing,” said Lickher, one of the drag artists, who was dressed as a silver cowboy. “Things are hard sometimes, but look around the room and just feel the love from everybody and just spread kindness, because it’s free. We’re not hurting anybody.”
While NEA funding has been cut, the enthusiasm for the orchestra’s Pride Concert made it clear that there is still interest and support for pride events. Dr. Dougherty has pledged a matching gift for all donations to the orchestra, up to $100,000, made by June 30.
Queer artists take the spotlight
Even if the certainty of the concert taking place was never in question, the loss of NEA funds lingered in the air throughout the night. Music can speak a language that words simply cannot. The orchestra’s first song, a piece from gay composer Leonard Bernstein, moved the person in the seat next to me to tears.
“This is a place where everyone is welcome,” Nézet-Séguin said. “All are welcome.”
The performing arts and queer culture go together like sequins and drag queens, and each performance brought a new flavor.
The orchestra played behind Graham Cracker as she earnestly sang “Rainbow Connection,” a song that despite its Muppet Movie origins always hits with its quietly hopeful and disarmingly sincere message.
Freddie Ballentine was one of a handful of performers in the orchestra’s current production of “Tristan und Isolde,” who sang on Wednesday. He belted “I Am What I Am” in richly operatic, deep velvety tones that filled the enormous theater.
“I don’t want praise, I don’t want pity,” he sang. “I bang my own drum, Some think it’s noise, I think it’s pretty.” The song swelled, growing louder and faster, until the final refrain, “Hey world, I am what I am!”
When the choirs came together, the night’s message of unity was in full effect — hundreds of voices and musicians in one cohesive piece. They sang “I’m Coming Out,” a gay anthem written by a straight man and “This Is Me,” “The Greatest Showman’s” anthem of acceptance.
Their voices harmonized together with the orchestra and “Tristan und Isolde” performers for their final song, “Make Our Garden Grow,” another Bernstein piece from “Candide” about moving forward and building a good life through honest work after a painful journey of war and loss.
“We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good,” they sang. “We’ll do the best we know. We’ll build our house and chop our wood. And make our garden grow.”
They repeated the final lyric over and over, “And make our garden grow,” building their voices, as if nurturing the imagined garden with song. At the end of the piece, Graham Cracker asked the audience if there were “any questions.” The crowd answered her by taking to their feet with a long standing ovation.