Astoria Choir founder and artistic director Adam Eggleston
MAY 2019 I BOROMAG.COM 21
Fortunately, Astoria won’t be left out of
the celebration; the decade-old Astoria
Choir is marking this occasion and supporting
the queer community in our own
borough with the performance of the
piece “Prayers for Bobby” on June 8.
“When I was planning this season last
spring, I realized this June was going to
be the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall
Riots and there was going to be the global
pride event going on as well. I felt like
it would be an appropriate time to deal
with LGBTQ+ issues,” said Astoria Choir
founder and artistic director Adam Eggleston.
Eggleston decided on “Prayers for Bobby,”
a piece based off a true story (and a
1996 book of the same name by Leroy
Aarons).
The book is about gay teen Bobby Griffith
and his mother, Mary Griffith, who both
struggled with Bobby’s sexual orientation.
Bobby was taught his whole life through religion
and his family that homosexuality was
wrong, and the lack of support and acceptance
led Bobby to suicide when he was 20
years old. Mary was a devout Christian and
churchgoer who did not approve of Bobby’s
queerness and thought he could be fixed
through prayers. She eventually realized
that was not the case.
“When I was thinking of pieces that
would be appropriate, it was one of the
first ones that came to mind, and the
more I thought about it, the more it made
sense,” Eggleston said. “Plus, the proximity
of the composer, he could come up
and be a part of the process potentially.”
The composer, Jay Kawarsky, is a professor
at Eggleston’s alma mater, Westminster
Choir College in Princeton, New
Jersey. Kawarsky wrote the composition
shortly after the book was published in
the '90s.
“I am a composer and a contemporary
music enthusiast, so I am especially
thrilled to be performing a concertlength
work by a living composer,” said
Astoria Choir member Mavis MacNeil.
“Often, audiences worry contemporary
music might be too weird or alienating,
but ‘Prayers for Bobby’ is very musically
accessible, which I think is great because
its subject matter is so intense and heavy;
the contrast between these two components
is very effective.”
The music tells the story from both the
mother’s and the son’s perspectives.
“The text of the music is sometimes directly
quoting Bobby’s diary or an essay
that he wrote while he was still in high
school about his feelings, and it also
quotes Mary about coming to terms with
herself and her beliefs,” Eggleston said.
“The book is set up in the same way. It
will have a chapter about Bobby and
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