It was the evening of 19 February 1980 that thirty-eight men gathered for the first rehearsal of the newly formed Turtle Creek Chorale in Dallas Texas. At the time, the idea of having a men’s chorus which drew membership from and which would serve Dallas’ large, but not highly visible, gay community was a bold and daring notion, and far braver than one may readily conceive today. In the thirty-nine years which have passed since that day in 1980, so much has changed so dramatically that it is difficult to realize the very potent courage and powerful conviction that those thirty-eight pioneering singers expressed by daring to take part in that first rehearsal.

The idea to form a gay men’s chorus for Dallas was famously born as three friends chatted over cocktails one Sunday afternoon in Dallas. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus had been founded less than two years before as the world’s first musical organization specifically serving the gay community, and its initial successes and setbacks were much discussed in gay communities across North America. It had been more than a decade since the watershed Stonewall Riots, and the gay community was finding more acceptance than ever before. People wanted more social outlets than gay bars could provide, and many wanted to be a part of something which could provide both a creative outlet and a channel for community service. Musical organizations filled this need wonderfully, and many long-established gay and lesbian choruses and bands were formed in this era

Since the social and political climate in Dallas of 1980 was far from progressive, it was decided that the name of the chorus should reflect the area of the city from which much of its membership would be drawn, but would not include the word “gay.” For some years, this led folks in choruses who were more politically active to infer that the TCC was “in the closet,” yet this was never the case. The very first flyer promoting the first rehearsal of 19 February makes it quite clear; it proclaims the chorus to be created for gay men would like to sing and work with other gay men, and it notes that the first public performance had been planned for Gay Pride Week. The poster also emphasizes that “our purpose is good music,” and the chorus would be “an organization dedicated to enjoying and performing the finest four-part male choral music.”

It is not possible in this short narrative to give the history of the Turtle Creek Chorale the treatment it is fully due. But the highpoints can be noted. The Turtle Creek Chorale (“TCC”) gave its first public performance in April of 1980 after just 8 weeks of rehearsal, and its first formal concert was in June of that year. As is often the case with community arts groups, the TCC had its early struggles as it strove to develop its identity and to find the needed funding to keep the organization alive. Members who sang during the chorus’ first decade recall car washes and bake sales and other typical fund-raising efforts that kept the organization afloat. The early years of the Chorale coincided with the most devastating period of the AIDS crisis. The impact upon the chorus was huge, both emotionally and psychologically, and practically. Yet the organization persevered. The membership worked hard to support one another during a time when memorial services and funerals far outnumbered concerts. The impact of AIDS upon the Turtle Creek Chorale and the chorus’ response is memorably and movingly documented in the Emmy award winning PBS feature After Goodbye, which first aired in 1993.

The organization also worked hard to find leadership with the right combination of musical creativity, and experience, mixed with vision and energy. The chorus needed someone who could embrace and embody its core values of making beautiful music and building bridges among people of all walks of life. The quest was somewhat constrained by the simple fact that the Chorale had a minuscule budget from which to pay for the talent they needed! Yet, as some sage once observed, “The Universe provides,” and so it did in this case. Doctor Timothy Seelig, who had been dismissed from a church position in Houston when he “came out” in early 1987 decided that the Turtle Creek Chorale was an opportunity he wanted to pursue, despite the rather uncertain finances of the organization.

Dr. Seelig brought both outstanding musical credentials and remarkable vision to the TCC. For the next two decades, Dr. Seelig would direct the chorus as it attained one milestone after another. The chorus rose to international stature, its joint recording of John Rutter’s Requiem with the Women’s Chorus of Dallas reached the top of Billboard’s classical charts, and by the mid-1990s the TCC was recognized by Grammy Magazine as the most recorded men’s chorus in the world. The chorus performed for Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Dallas, and for the Inaugurals of Texas Governor Anne Richards and Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk. The chorus frequently joined forces with other North Texas musical groups and consistently reached out to an ever-broadening definition of “community.” The Turtle Creek Chorale was invited to perform for both regional and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and performed concert tours across the US and abroad. The TCC was also featured in two award winning PBS documentaries in 1993 and 2005. On top of all these achievements, the chorus continued to devote thousands of man-hours every year to community service, and to remain a valuable asset for the city of Dallas.

In 2007, after 20 years of service embracing fully 2/3 of the history of the chorus, Dr. Seelig stepped down as artistic director. It would be easy to understand if he simply chose to “rest of his laurels” and to bask in his two decades of landmark accomplishment, but, characteristically, he has thrown himself into new projects and today, as Artistic Director of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, continues to provide leadership and service to his many communities.

Following Dr. Seelig’s tenure, an extensive nationwide search in 2006-2007 found Dr. Jonathan Palant, who served as the TCC’s Artistic Director through the 2011 season. Dr. Palant brought impeccable musical credentials and energetic embrace of the chorus’ mission to his role as artistic director, the chorus continued to accumulate accolades and to achieve notable milestones, including a concert tour of Spain in July of 2010. Significantly, community service remained a core value for Dr. Palant and the chorus, as exampled by 2010’s “Voices For Haiti,” a fund-raising concert for Haitian Earthquake Relief. Doctor Palant felt that the TCC simply had to find a way to help and he worked with many organizations and artists to make this happen in an astonishingly short time. This concert was a 6-hour “marathon” featuring several musical groups and performers from North Texas, and was hosted by Dallas’ Cathedral of Hope. Doctor Palant left the Turtle Creek Chorale after four seasons; he continues to contribute to Dallas’ musical culture as director of two community choirs. Doctor Palant’s continued commitment to community service is highlighted by his founding and nurturing of The Dallas Street Choir, which serves Dallas’ homeless population.

After Dr. Palant’s departure in July of 2011, then Assistant Professor and Director of Choral Activities of Eastern Michigan University, Trey Jacobs was selected to serve as Interim Artistic Director of the Chorale. Though the job was originally conceived of as “interim,” it became immediately apparent upon his taking the podium that his position should become permanent, and in March of 2012, Trey Jacobs was named Artistic Director.

Under Trey Jacobs, the TCC remained a key element of Dallas’ artistic culture. In July of 2012, the Chorale delivered a highly acclaimed performance at the GALA Choruses Festival in Denver, Colorado, and in December of that year, the TCC broke new ground with a holiday concert series that featured two complete and completely different concert offerings. In March of 2013, the chorus was honored to take part in choral Clinics for the American Choral Directors Association convention in Dallas.

At the end of the 2013-2014 season, Trey Jacobs informed the Chorale of his intention to return a career in music education in Tennessee; the TCC’s long-time Assistant Director Sean Baugh was named Interim Director for the 2014-2015 season. Sean, of course, had some impressively large shoes to fill, and he was more than equal to the challenge, so shortly after leading the TCC in an outstanding concert celebrating the chorus’ 35th anniversary, on 4 March 2015, Sean was named Permanent Artistic Director.

Under Sean’s leadership the chorus continued to be a significant contributor to the Dallas Community and to the LGBTQ Community world wide. In June of 2016, just two days after the tragic news of the massacre in Orlando, Sean led the Chorus in a widely acclaimed concert for support and healing. Two weeks later, the TCC performed a joint concert with Germany’s Schola Cantorosa in preparation for the 2016 GALA Choruses Festival in Denver. In Colorado, the chorus delivered another bravura performance on 6 July 2016. The chorus ended 2016 with a historic “personal best” for the TCC; for its first time ever, the TCC performed a fully sold out concert series for “A Not-So-Silent Night.” The concerts received rave reviews.

With our nation seemingly ever more powerfully divided in the wake of the most recent presidential election, Sean proposed the idea of the chorus performing a “Friendship Tour.” The concept of the tour was quickly embraced and strongly supported by fans and patrons, and both staff and membership invested great effort to make this happen. The mission of the tour was to reach out to communities that were not the chorus’ traditional audience; accordingly, the June 2018 tour included six performances over four days in four cities in four states, with well-attended concerts in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Little Rock, Arkansas; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Tyler, Texas.

Most recently, the TCC had a wonderfully successful holiday concert series, “Shimmer & Shine,” and is preparing for its next main stage concert, “Blinded: Turtles Rock Out!” And, of course, planning is already well underway for next year’s landmark fortieth anniversary season!

Naturally, I have left out immense amounts of information in this short piece. There are so many key contributors I have not mentioned, and vital, dedicated people I do not name here who have made the Turtle Creek Chorales what it is and has been these past thirty-nine years. As I say, it is impossible in one brief essay to adequately cover thirty-nine years in the history of such a vital and vibrant organization. Any errors or omissions are my own doing.

Suffice it to say:

Happy Birthday, Turtle Creek Chorale! Here’s to many, many more!

— Jamie Rawson

Wow! It is the Second of February already! That means that Armadillo Day 2016 is exactly SIX months away! I can hardly stand the excitement!!! But today belongs to a different forecaster. The much-celebrated and ballyhooed Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning thereby foretelling six more weeks of hard winter weather. Well, here in North Texas the winter has been rather mild, days averaging the mid-sixties. But for those who set store by the groundhog-as-weatherman, Phil’s shadow is most unwelcome.

So why is today identified as Groundhog Day? What’s that all about anyway? And what about the fact the February 2nd was known as Candlemas in olden times? As with so many apparently simple things, the explanation is a bit involved and convoluted.

An old English rhyme states:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas bring clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

In the Liturgical Calendar of the Church, the second of February was designated “the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.” The Mosaic Laws of the Old testament decreed that a woman was “unclean” for seven days following the birth of a male child, and that she must stay away from the Temple for a further 33 days, making the period for ritual cleansing a total of forty days. (The period was twice that long if the baby was a female! Gender equality was decidely NOT an Old Testament concept.) At the end of this term, the mother would return to the Temple to make a sacrifice concluding her purification, and to present her child to the Temple community.

From the very earliest days of the Christian Church, the feast of The Presentation (or Purification) was an important event on the Liturgical Calendar. By the end of the Fourth Century A.D., the date of Christ’s birth had been set as December 25; calculating forty days from that date produced February second as the date for The Presentation. So far, so good?

Because this Feast celebrated the entry of The Christ – The Light of the World – into the Temple and the greater world, it became traditional by the Eleventh Century to bless the candles that were to be used in the upcoming year. Originally, just the official church candles were blessed, but eventually household candles were included as well. The Priest would bless all the candles presented, intoning the words: “Lumen ad revelationem gentium et gloriam plebis tuae Israel” (A Light to reveal You to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”)

Possibly because the theme of this Feast was the entry of The Light into the world, or possibly because of older pagan traditions about mid-Winter – opinions are highly diverse about this – there was a tradition in lower Germany that if a certain animal should see its shadow on Candlemas day, it presaged six weeks of severe Winter weather. Again, details are hard to come by, but some sources specify that the animal in question should be a badger, others state that it should be a hedgehog. (Both of these animals “hibernate” in the Winter and very often are not awake to be looking around at shadows in early February.)

When William Penn invited German immigrants from the Pfaltz to settle in his new colony, Pennsylvania, the new arrivals carried their homeland traditions with them, including the notion that February second was an important day for weather forecasting. Hedgehogs not being found in the New World, and Badgers still sleeping away their Winter typically, a local substitute was found: the humble woodchuck or groundhog (Marmota monax.)

The first extant mention of Groundhog Day can be read at the Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center. It says: “Last Tuesday, the 2nd, (February 1841) was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.”

In any case, the tradition was a highly localized phenomenon, and not widely observed in Colonial America, nor during the years leading up to the Civil War. But, as so often happens, a good promotional campaign took a local tradition and turned into a national event. A couple of Pennsylvania newspaper publishers decided to make a genuine event of “Groundhog Day,” and Pennsylvania’s first formal celebration of Groundhog Day began on February second, 1886 with a proclamation in The Punxsutawney Spirit by the newspaper’s editor, Clymer Freas.

Because of the novelty of the celebration and its homegrown character, early telegraph news services spread the story as human interest “filler” for their subscribers. By the late 1890s, Groundhog day was known across the United States. In the days when radio was the major mass medium, Groundhog Day was duly reported, but it took the advent of television to make a real national spectacle of the occasion. For Groundhog Day 2001, an estimated 35,000 people gathered in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania just to see what the Groundhog would see.

And, just FYI: no meaningful correlation has ever been made between the Groundhog’s prognosis and the actual weather subsequently recorded! But, I must ask: what else would one expect from a giant rodent?

Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” — Percy Bysshe Shelly