By Dr. Tim Seelig–
We spend our lives dreaming about this thing called retirement. All those years, we make an uninformed assumption we will retire with all the faculties and facilities we have while we are dreaming about it. Sometimes, this is not the case.
January was a birthday month for me. I began my 75th year on the planet (turned 74). I am so tired of hearing “age is just a number.” It’s true. It’s a really big number! I know they mean well. I’m also not fond of, “You don’t look a year over 73!” But here we are. There are most certainly some simple joys of elderhood. George Bernard Shaw once said, “Wisdom is wasted on the old and youth is wasted on the young.”
One of the things that happens as we age is eliminating things we did before. These include both physical and mental. In my day, I could high kick like a Rockette. I always dreamed of being one. It just wasn’t something a little Baptist boy in Fort Worth, Texas, was supposed to do. Alas, my high kicks are now more like leg stretches, which are often accompanied by a groan.
Some of our paring down of previous activities is born out of fear of failure. “I won’t be as good as I was in my prime.” Singing is one of those. The aging voice has a name: presbyphonia. Sounds like talking out in church. People’s voices simply change as they age. They feel different, don’t respond the same, and are often lower in pitch. People stop singing and drop out of choirs. There are also the challenges of memorization and occasional choreography that become more challenging as we age. Well, gay singers in Portland don’t have to quit singing anymore. There’s a new choir for Q+ Elders and Allies in town. Here’s how it happened.
This past summer, when seemingly all the queer choir singers in the world gathered in Minneapolis for the GALA (Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses) Festival, one chorus took the convention by storm. It was the first LGBTQ+ choir for “people of a certain age” from Denver, Colorado. Instead of using senior, aging, old, or over-the-hill for their name, they used sage. Ah, there is that wisdom thing again.
A former member of the Portland Lesbian Choir, Cin Bowman, came home from the festival with a dream: create this in Portland. From August until February, she and a group of people dug in and worked tirelessly to get ready. They got their 501c3 status, Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws, bank account, website, logo, and, yes, even t-shirts. They created a board with Michael McDonald as its first President. All this usually takes more than a year to accomplish. They were focused and knocked it out of the park. Time is not exactly the friend of our age group.
In early December, they announced the position of founding artistic director. I applied and was thrilled to be offered the position. My work began. I found myself selecting music for an unknown number of people with completely unknown skills. I chose pieces with texts that described the simple joys of elderhood. At our first rehearsal, we were over the moon when 70 wonderful people showed up to sing. The balance of voices was great. The age limit is 55. That is the minimum age, not the maximum. There is no upper limit on membership.
Allow me to tell you a bit about how the first Sage Singers in Denver began. Carol White is a legend among LGBTQ+ choruses. She founded the Denver Women’s Chorus in 1984 and Harmony, a mixed chorus, in 1991. The entire landscape of music in Denver was changed by the things she has done for decades. In 2018, it was her wife Judith’s turn. They’ve been together over 40 years. As she and Carol looked around, they were seeing more and more of the friends who had stopped singing and missed it. Judith got some folks together, chose the name Sage Singers, and hired a conductor. The rest was, well, you know.
Judith tells a story familiar to all of us who have become a part of any LGBTQ+ chorus over the last 4 decades. We have immediately felt something very different than groups or choirs we had been a part of before. Long before there was a movie or a Kelly Clarkson, there was a code used by us queer folk: PLU (People Like Us). When we joined choirs filled with what would become our chosen family, the experience was overwhelming. Being in a choir of PLU doing the same thing we love is indescribable. Now, Sage Singers takes PLU to a new level. It’s now filled with people sharing the same joys and sorrows, aches and pains, and (hopefully) Social Security!
We are all members of the presbyphonia church! Most of all, we are still here; we are still making a difference with our voices and living life to the fullest. This is from one of our songs, “It’s so strange being the same age as old people.” I feel this every day. Age is just a number (oops). We had auditions on February 9 and will begin our brand-new chorus with 70 singers. That’s perfect, since it is right in the middle of our demographic age.
The amazing Holly Near penned the iconic song “Singing for our Lives.” We are respectfully tweaking that to “Singing for the Rest of our Lives!” She recently sent this note to me to share:
“Dear Singers and Supporters, I hear from Tim Seelig that you are Singing for the Rest of our Lives! This makes me so very happy and reassured. Sending you all best wishes and the best notes. Holly Near”
Who knows? A Sage Singers chorus may be coming to a city near you!
Dr. Tim Seelig is the Conductor Laureate of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. http://www.timseelig.com/
TLC: Tears, Laughs and Conversation
Published on February 13, 2025
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