New Home for the Holidays

How are the rehearsals going for this year’s holiday concert?

It’s really a lot of exciting energy. Pre-pandemic, we had around 60 people singing in the chorus. Now we have 130 singers on the rolls. So we’re trying to manage this massive growth and welcome new people. It can be a bit daunting walking into a room of 130 people.

You joined the chorus as its new artistic director just a few months ago, so this will be your first time helming the hotly anticipated holiday show. What can audiences expect this year?

I programmed a show that lives on nostalgia, a lot of camp, some reflective moments, and then some dancing for everybody to get excited about. That’s what audiences are expecting from us. Nostalgic camp, I’ll say. For “Holiday Hits with a Splash of Sass,” you have to do the movement. [Heetland snaps a Z shape through the air.] Splash… of… sass. It’s a tradition.

Alex Heetland, the recently appointed artistic director of the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus (Courtesy of the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus)

What are some fun or meaningful moments you’ve seen as you’ve settled in with the chorus?

We were reading through songs the first night of rehearsals for the holiday show, and there’s one song, “Super Gay Christmas,” that the returning members still have memorized from last year. They were excited to show off their choreography that they remembered as well. And you could see some of the new people sitting there, looking at their music and then looking around. I was like, “Oh my gosh—have we scared off all the new people with one song?” [Laughs] It’s a fun gay Christmas song. I don’t think you would know it unless you know about the show.

Another one that people may kind of expect from us—and that I’m really looking forward to doing with this really huge sound from this group—is our arrangement of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” That one’s more reflective. It’s not all just camp.

We’re also working on “Unruly Heart” from the musical The Prom that we’ll use for some of our community events like the trans remembrance service at Trinity Cathedral [on Nov. 18] that we participate in. It’s essentially about the idea that the heart can’t be controlled, and it has to say what it wants to say. We were reading through that, and you could really feel and see how much it meant to be able to sing the words and what solidarity you get by singing it together. It’s just extraordinary.

The holiday show is kind of a signature cultural event in Sacramento going back almost four decades. The Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus started in the early ’80s, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. What is its mission and how has it changed over the years?

Gay men’s choruses exist to give voice. Even while we enjoy a lot of the rights that our forebears fought for, those rights aren’t permanent. It’s about building on that history. We need to continue to be vocal about being here and being gay. We also need to build a community outside of ours, because we live in a straight world constantly. Many gay men’s choruses specifically formed or grew up during the AIDS crisis. And then we felt a real sense of purpose when fighting for marriage equality.

There are some gay men’s organizations around the country that are like, “Well, what are we doing now?” But before I came to California, I was working at an LGBTQ+ mixed chorus called The Quire in Iowa City, where queer people—trans kids especially—are under attack by the state Legislature. [Editors’ note: In Iowa, bills that prevent doctors from providing gender-affirming care to people under 18 and block trans students from using school bathrooms that correspond with their gender identities were signed into law this past March.] The public library in Vinton—which is near Cedar Rapids—has lost librarians in the past couple of years because people in the town don’t want books about sexual orientation or queer characters in the library and were harassing LGBTQ+ staff members. So there was an immediate need, and we as a chorus had to speak directly to those sorts of things: Why is it important that trans kids can be themselves in school? Why is it important that there are books that have people who look or act like us in them?

There is maybe a sense that in California, that kind of thing is not happening. But it’s not just in red states that people are working to claw back some of the rights and privileges that were so hard-won for this community. There’s a similar movement at schools just outside of Sacramento that feels very familiar to the one that I experienced in Iowa.

I believe you’re referring to the school board in Rocklin, which recently approved a controversial policy requiring educators to notify parents if their child asks to use a different name or identifies as a gender other than the sex the child was assigned at birth. 

Rocklin is the one. And not six months ago, at Saticoy Elementary in the LA Unified School District, there were parents protesting a Pride assembly and the reading of a book that just said some children have same-sex parents. So I’m here to tell people that in California, as much as we’d like to feel comfortable, these things are happening here too.

Another part of [our mission] is spreading joy. That’s also what we’re doing when we put on these big stage shows.

The holiday show is moving to the Crest Theatre this year from the Pioneer Congregational Church in midtown, which the chorus sold out in 2022. How will the new venue, which will more than triple the audience capacity for each concert, impact the upcoming performances, which will be held Dec. 8–10?

It’s a gorgeous space. It’s kind of funny, because the Crest was once a vaudeville house, and we’re maybe bringing back some of that vaudeville camp to the stage. Trying to fit 130 people on a small stage just leads to people singing behind curtains, so I’m glad to have the larger space for that.

There is a holiday show tradition of doing Mad Libs with the audience, who shout out answers. And we’re going to keep that tradition at the Crest. We’ll probably have to have people with microphones running around the audience, since we probably won’t be able to hear people in the back of the theater shouting out their answers to the stage. So we’re working on ways to keep that kind of festive party atmosphere even in the larger space.

Speaking of relocating to a different space, you moved from Iowa and took over as SGMC’s artistic director in August. How have you settled into Sacramento more broadly?

I got an apartment in midtown. In Iowa, I had to drive everywhere. I am so excited because now I can essentially walk everywhere. And I just got my bike, so I’ve taken a ride down by the river. I’m not a bike fanatic, but if I don’t have to drive, I am much happier.

Where are you from originally, and what was the arc that led you here?

I grew up in DeWitt, a small town in Iowa. I went to Minneapolis-St. Paul for college, and I was like, “This is great. I am never moving back to Iowa.” I went to Concordia University, St. Paul for undergrad in order to be a church musician, and I did my master’s in choral conducting at University of Minnesota.

After that, a friend of mine was going to teach music at a school in India. She was like, “This school needs a choir director. You wanna come?” And I was like, “What else am I doing?” So I taught choirs and music theory for three years—at that international boarding school in Mussoorie, India, and then at a school outside of Delhi—until Covid. I thought, “If the world is ending, I’d better go back home.” So I hopped on an emergency flight where you’re allowed like 20 kilos of luggage or something. I left a lot of stuff in India.

I was leading The Quire in Iowa City, and I was like, “Wow, this is literally everything I want to do,” but it was not my plan to be in Iowa. And so I started looking for chorus jobs elsewhere. There’s a huge network of gay and lesbian and trans choruses across the United States and internationally. I was able to snag this job in Sacramento through that network.

Growing up, I was always singing in choruses. I grew up in a singing tradition—a singing household, even. All of my sisters and I were required to take piano and be in choir and band for as long as Mom and Dad could dictate that to us. I was in a children’s chorus for a holiday pops thing where the Quad City Symphony Orchestra was playing. It was extraordinary, that sense of being part of something that’s bigger than one person. This was before my voice changed, so that would’ve been maybe seventh grade. I was always looking at my conductors, thinking, “Oh my God, I want to be them.” You admire people who are in leadership positions, especially when you’re young. I guess that’s been the inciting incident for my work. How amazing is it that I can make a living getting people to sing together? That’s so cool.

When did your sexual orientation first factor into your career choice?

In small-town Iowa, there were no gay people that I knew when I was growing up. I guess Will & Grace was on TV. Those were the only gay people that existed in any way in my world. I came out when I went to Concordia University. I majored in music and theater, and while I was there, in this conservative, tiny Lutheran college, the chair of the theater department left in the middle of the term. While the administration wouldn’t comment, I and many other students believed that he was forced to resign because he was gay, and we started doing an old-fashioned protest. We sat in at the president’s office. We disrupted campus events. It didn’t change anything, but we tried to do something.

Last year, when I was in Iowa, I was substitute teaching quite a bit. I kept meeting kids who are doing that same type of protest at a much younger age than I was. I’m kind of envious of their ability to understand who they are, first of all, so much younger than I was, and be able to find ways to advocate for themselves in a way that High School Alex never would’ve been able to.

Was there something specific in the job description or in the institutional history of the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus that drew you to this role? 

This organization is burgeoning now. They have worked really hard to make good financial decisions and establish themselves to build for the future. The audience-building has been going really well the past few years, and now it’s my job to say, “What is the next step with this growth?”

Next year [in July] is the GALA Choruses Festival—that’s the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses—in Minneapolis. It usually happens every four years, but it got canceled in 2020 due to Covid. It’s a week of wall-to-wall performances, and every group gets a half-hour set. There are something like 200 choruses who attend. We are in a position to make a big splash with the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus, which eight years ago wasn’t this juggernaut. Part of the spectacle of this sort of performance is for people to say, “Wow! Listen to that huge sound!” And we’re going to give it to them.

Sacramento is more excited about its gay men’s chorus than any other city I’ve ever seen. I think what’s most exciting and unique, actually, is how much I’ve seen the Sacramento community care about this chorus. I think our growing reputation nationally relies on that—any recognition that we are building or will build across the country is based on how much this community supports this group. And we have a lot of responsibility to the Sacramento community to be a part of events where actual advocacy happens.

What are you looking ahead to in the future? What are some specific goals or performances that you want to pursue? 

I can’t wait for when we hit the downbeat on our holiday concert. From the first sound, I want people to be like, “Ahhh!” We’re going to create a gorgeous, campy, crazy, fun concert. For the 40th anniversary season next year, we’re asking ourselves: “Do we commission a new piece that Sacramento audiences will be the first to hear? Do we try to do a recording project?” My personal goal is that in five years, we won’t fit in the Crest anymore. We’ll have to be at the Memorial Auditorium. We’ll have to be at the SAFE performing arts center. We’re going to be one of the big forces to reckon with on the national gay men’s chorus scene. 

This interview has been edited for length, flow and clarity. “Holiday Hits with a Splash of Sass” will run Dec. 8–10 at the Crest Theatre. For more info, visit sacgaymenschorus.com.

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