On Friday, June 19, more than 200 voices will deliver a choral presentation commemorating both the loss of life at the Pulse Nightclub as well as acknowledging the lives and presence of victims and survivors of the tragedy. “Amor Eterno: A Requiem for Pulse” is a collaboration between the Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida and the gay choruses of Tampa Bay, Miami and Orlando.
Gabe Salazar, the Artistic Director for the Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida, was co-commissioned to develop the lyrical accompaniment and organize the performance. Generally, a requiem honors someone who has died, but Salazar explains that the word dead isn’t used until the last movement of the piece.
“It obviously gives homage and pays tribute and it's very beautiful to those who have passed, but it's more uplifting in the sense that it really pays tribute to those who have survived and who are still living with the remnants of emotional trauma, physical trauma, who are fighting to keep the names of those who have gone alive,” Salazar said. “There's a lot of Latin and Spanish themes as far as instrumentation because it was Latin night and the majority who were taken were of Latin descent.”
Salazar also spoke to families and people closely tied to Pulse as he was curating the piece. The planning and process included consultation with the Victims First advocacy group to ensure survivors and families had input in the production.
The seven-part requiem features music composed by Saunder Choi. He built the composition around a Brahms requiem that stands out from the genre for having a more uplifting tone.
“I really wanted to reimagine, to follow the themes from the Brahms, but reimagine it towards the story of Pulse and the losses that we experience in the LGBTQ community,” says Saunder Choi, composer of “Amor Eterno: A Requiem for Pulse.”
Four poets of color from the LGBTQ+ community, Leo Herrera, Brian Sonia Wallace, Amir Rabiyah, and Andrea Assaf, were asked to contribute writings, and their works were incorporated into the composition.
“I'm hopeful in the power of art to memorialize our stories and to memorialize queer stories, that's why I decided to accept the invitation to write this work,” says Choi.
Choi says the piece explores universal experiences with the goal of building empathy and connecting communities.
“I wanted to create something that tells the story, acknowledges the pain, but also place on the universal aspects of grieving of loss of finding comfort of love because these are universal aspects that it doesn't matter if you're gay or straight or whatever color your skin is, these are all aspects of life that we experience,” he says.
“Amor Eterno: A Requiem for Pulse” debuts at the Au-Rene Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale.
