You probably haven't been to a vocal concert since your high school crush object sang that solo from in the annual choir festival. What relevance does choral music have to my everyday life? you ask. Well, how about a celebration of everyone's equal right to love? San Francisco's Volti, a new-vocal music group (the adjective "new" modifies "vocal music," not the group itself, which has been around for over 25 years), is performing the world premiere of No More To Hide: An American Wedding Cantata, in tribute to last year's same-sex marriages.

No More to Hide sets to music a verse from 1 John 4:7 ("Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.") and snippets from Leaves of Grass ("I dream'd in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth.") -- and for you civil rights activists on a budget, will be performed for free at City Hall next Wednesday, November 16, courtesy of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services and the Music@MONS program.

If you like to absorb your choral music in a more pastoral setting, Volti will perform No More To Hide on Mon. Nov. 21, along with several other gay-themed works (more Whitman, and some Edna St. Vincent Millay) at St. Francis Lutheran, which was expelled from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America for ordaining gay and lesbian pastors in 1990, and thus was totally free to bless the same-sex weddings from 2004. Tickets available here (and also a Sunday performance in Berkeley).

Picture of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, same-sex marriage no. 1

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