Memorable and Beloved – This December, The Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus Refrains From Restraint

In music, a refrain is a song’s repeated line or phrase, usually found at the end of a verse.

According to one definition, “A refrain’s repetition makes it memorable and beloved, and it ties the song together.” The refrain is sometimes known as a chorus, as in the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus … which is no stranger to using repetition to make things memorable and beloved.

The Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus, of course, is the decades-old queer institution that identifies itself as “a volunteer community chorus whose mission is Building Community Through Music. Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus seeks to provide its members with rewarding musical experiences and to promote social exchange.”

That social exchange often revolves around social change. Professes the website: “As an organization that celebrates diversity and uses music as a way to transform, educate and heal, the Chorus works towards the elimination of homophobia and intolerance through community outreach.”

Such outreach is a refrain unto itself, one that manifests in all sorts of ways, including the TCGMC’s annual holiday concert. This year’s version is entitled “Wranglers & Refrains: A Homespun Holiday.” Like any respectable refrain, it’ll assert itself twice: once on December 6th and again on December 7th, both concerts beginning at 7:30 p.m. and taking place at the TCGMC’s home court, Ted Mann Concert Hall.

Lyric lovers worried about the theme superseding the season needn’t fret. As the TCGMC puts it, “With traditional holiday songs too, this concert will be a hoot.” The group’s website elaborates: “This shindig is a feast for the ears, eyes, and heart! Imagine Prairie Home Companion meets the Grand Ole Opry meets holiday cheer, and you’re halfway to toe-tappin’ and hat-tippin’! Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton? Check!”

Wranglers, by definition, are professionals who work with beasts of burden … and sometimes those beasts are other wranglers as will be on full display during 2024’s concert, “a holiday hoedown with line dancing, Santa Claus, fiddles, and more.”

The free-range festivities will be abetted by the Chorus’s newish executive director, Dennis Whipple, who’s engaged in a refrain of his own: the Minnesota native founded and led Saint Cloud’s GREAT Theater. According to his TCGMC profile, “Dennis Whipple is a creative arts executive with experience in strategy, financial management, fundraising, and marketing with a record of strategically growing institutions’ missions, objectives, and brand awareness.”

Those yin-yang-y attributes got Whipple noticed by them fancy East Coasters a few years back. Answering their call, Whipple served as managing director of Brooklyn’s Page 73 Productions (“We launch the careers of playwrights”) and director of operations for Millburn’s Paper Mill Playhouse (“The State Theater of New Jersey”).

But the Gopher State had trapped Whipple’s heart within its figurative buck teeth, pulling him back to his native soil.

“It’s like that old saying goes,” Whipple muses, “‘You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.’ Since I came back to Minnesota, I’ve been reminded that being gay is my attribute.”

His orientation is not the only attribute Whipple draws upon in his capacity as the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus’s executive director. “I find myself blending my artistic experience with my love of numbers,” he notes matter-of-factly. When he assumed his current role this past summer, Whipple had his work cut out for him.

“We needed robust action,” he remembers. “We still needed rejuvenation after COVID.”

That rejuvenation is now well underway, catalyzing the relationship between the TCGMC’s members, sponsors, and audience, and tying them together like a refrain … or a Chorus.

“We’ve added twenty-eight new members,” the numbers-loving executive director reports. “It’s the strongest we’ve been in two decades.”

Most importantly, the Chorus’s art form benefits from these moves. “It’s all coming together in this production,” Whipple says.

As the North Star State’s nights grow longer and the North Star State’s days grow colder, “Wranglers & Refrains: A Homespun Holiday” is sure to make the season memorable and beloved. Or, as their website puts it, “Grab your boots and plaid, and two-step on over to TCGMC’s holiday hootenanny, Wranglers and Refrains: A Homespun Holiday!”

Wranglers & Refrains: A Homespun Holiday
December 6 & 7, 2024 @ 7:30pm
Ted Mann Concert Hall
2128 S. 4th St.
Minneapolis, MN 55455

General admission regular-price tickets are $45 for adults, $25 for students
www.tcgmc.org
www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/def75258-e6e2-437e-9f3c-e2e8fa993dea