GALA Choruses recently had the opportunity to interview Joseph Piazza, artistic director of Golden Gate Men’s Chorus of San Francisco, CA. GGMC will travel to Riga, Latvia, this July to compete in the 8th World Choir Games.

GALA: Please tell us a little about yourself.

JP: I grew up in upstate New York in the beautiful Mohawk Valley where my music and theater studies took me to Northwestern University. At NU I not only majored in voice and music education, but was fortunate to study in the theater program. I studied choral conducting under Robert Harris and went on to study with Elmer Thomas, John Lehman, and Earl Rivers at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music for grad school. From school I traveled around quite a bit, conducting opera and music theater. In between gigs I studied at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. I was offered a position in the master’s program there but instead went on to conduct more opera and music theater productions across the country. Traveling around gets a bit tiring. It really was life on the road and so I decided to make my home San Francisco, which I had grow to love from my days at ACT.

I began teaching almost immediately in the Piedmont Unified School District working with wonderfully talented students and a community dedicated to the performing arts. For years I taught not only choral music, but theory and composition as well as Beginning, intermediate, and Advanced Acting. On the side I was also a working actor with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. I found time in my busy schedule to sing with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus where I met Vance George, who soon became my teacher. He took me on as a student to study conducting, score analysis, rehearsal technique, and, of course, practical experience about being a leader. I did work for a time with the San francisco Boys chorus and with Bob Eary for 10 years with the Piedmont East Bay Chorus as an associate conductor.

GALA: Tell us about Golden Gate Men’s Chorus.

JP: GGMC was formed 31 years ago by Dick Kramer. The members mostly came from the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. At the time the members were looking for a choral music experience that explored works from the stylistic periods including Renaissance music, the rich male choir repertoire of the Romantic period, as well as new, contemporary works. The model for GGMC was Harvard Glee Club or Yale Camerata. GGMC grew and became known for its dedication to the choral art and the pursuit of excellence in performance. The chorus then, as well as now, strives to model itself after the great male choruses from around the world such as Orphei Drängar, Berlin Radio Chorus, Estonian National Male chorus, and, under former music director Joseph Jennings, headed in the direction of Chanticleer and the King Singers by emphasizing the male soprano and alto which are still a hallmark of the GGMC sound.

This year alone has been remarkable. We debuted in Davies Symphony Hall, we joined forces with the San Francisco choral society for a complete performance of the Rachmaninoff Vespers. Of course, our 2012 performance in Denver at GALA was just one of those magic moments where it all came together in performance. The love that you get from a GALA audience is like no other. To finish the set with “It Gets Better”—well, the thunder that came from the crowd was so uplifting and inspirational. I guess I will always remember that moment.

GALA: What lead to your upcoming tour and competition at the World Choir Games?

JP: This is a first for GGMC. We are setting the bar higher. It’s an new adventure and a new experience to be among choirs from around the world, many of them considered to be musically “world class.” The Baltics is perhaps one of the richest areas of the world for singing and in particular choral music. It’s a national pastime, choral music festivals are attended by thousands of people, and of course these countries have literally declared their independence from the former Soviet Union through singing.

In Riga we will hear choirs from the Baltics and also hear other choirs from around the world. It will truly be an international choral music experience through which GGMC will grow in artistic perception and performing experience. It’s a competition so we will be on our game and working to be musically better than ever. Our personal best is yet to be realized and it’s exciting to stretch beyond what we thought possible. As a male choir we do pride ourselves on singing challenging repertoire and we do stand out with our ability to perform the TTBB repertoire and SATB literature using male sopranos and male altos.

The competitions require us to perform pieces that fit criteria for each category. We will compete in the male choir competitions, the sacred music competition and the American Spiritual competition.

I have chosen arrangements of Spirituals by Moses Hogan and works by William Dawson. We will premiering a new commission form Ivo Antognini, So Live Your Life, with text by the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh. We will also bring pieces by Lithuanian composer Vytautas Miskinis, a new TTBB arrangement of Hosanna by American composer Dan Forrest, works by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly, and a “suitcase” full of works by American composers such as Aaron Copland, Morten Lauridsen, Leonard Bernstein, Vincent Persichetti, Elliot Carter, and Z. Randall Stroope.

It’s a huge moment in the history of GGMC. The wealth of experiences that we will bring back both musically and culturally is something to be realized in the years to come.