Rehearsals continued, with plans for the first performance to take place on the Sunday of Pride weekend, June 20, at the Arlington Street Church. Jim Anderson, one of the founding members of the chorus, was also president of the Boston Pride organization at the time. He arranged for the chorus to give a preview of the concert at the Pride rally on Boston Common the day before the concert.
The men were nervous about performing in such a public venue, but that Saturday they ran up the stairs of the bandstand and performed a few songs to the gathered crowd. They were warmly received. So warmly, in fact, that the next evening when it came time for the first official concert, it was slightly delayed because the line to get in the church stretched down Arlington Street, around the corner and down Newbury Street. By the time the fifty-five members of the chorus took the stage the church was filled to capacity. Among the pieces the chorus performed was I Sing the Body Electric from the movie Fame. It went on to become a part of the chorus’ permanent repertoire for many years. The concert was a resounding success. But as time passed, Josef realized that this wasn’t quite the organization he had in mind. He turned the baton over to Lee Ridgway, who became music director in September.
The second major concert was planned as a holiday show at the Arlington Street Church. But the chorus received a request to perform at the end of October for the Human Rights Campaign Fund dinner at the Ritz Carlton; an invitation it graciously accepted.
Starting that spring, the chorus began the format for the concert season that it still follows today: a holiday show, a spring show, and a Pride show. The spring concert was held April 16, 1983. This concert began the long association of the chorus performing in the prestigious Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory. Still today it remains our primary performance space. The Pride show that year was held on Sunday, June 19 at Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street. This was also the beginning of a long association, as the church hall became our rehearsal space in the mid-90s. More than twenty years later, we still rehearse there, although our numbers have made the hall quite cramped in recent years.