June is known nationally as Pride Month, but in Rochester, “Pride” spans across the summer months: its Pride Parade is held in July. This year’s parade is on Saturday, July 20 at 11 a.m., beginning at South Ave. and heading to Highland Park, where the Pride Festival will be held.
With Pride month/s in the summertime, many Eastman students are not around to celebrate on campus. To give students an opportunity to celebrate, the George Walker Center is hosting a concert celebration of LGBTQ+ performers and composers next spring, part of its new George Walker Recital Series. The free concert will take place on Monday, January 25 at 7:30 p.m. in Hatch Recital Hall.
“I think this LGBTQ+ concert is going to be important because I do believe we need to take time to pause and celebrate,” says Crystal Sellers Battle, Associate Dean of Equity and Inclusion and Director of the George Walker Center. “And if we can’t do it in the summer, when our students are here, we should find another time to do it!”
But it’s the Eastman Queer Alliance, a student affinity club, that ensures that Pride is an integral part of student life. The club, previously known as Spectrum, had lost momentum during Covid, so Battle assisted students in reorganizing and reenergizing the club in 2022. Unsatisfied by the connotations of the word “spectrum,” they came up with a new, musically inspired name: EQ. It’s a play on emotional intelligence and EQ in sound, which means equalization or balance.
Jacob Hunter ’23E, past president of Eastman’s Queer Alliance Club, EQ. Photo by Wenixn Luo.
The first president was Jacob Hunter ’23E, then a senior vocal student, now an alumnus. Hunter put heads together with fellow students to imagine what a new gender and sexuality club might look like, asking what kinds of programming and events would be of interest to queer musicians and how they could build a greater sense of community with other queer musicians at Eastman. “What are the sorts of conversations that we want students at Eastman to be having, which we feel like aren’t happening,” Hunter asked. “That was the impetus for a lot of our events.”
Among the events were sexual health trivia, conversations about queer relationships, a project to build Sibley Library’s queer materials, a queer themed Super Bowl party, queer cinema showings, and more.
“It was so amazing to brainstorm and experiment with what queerness looks like at Eastman and ask how we can amplify voices, how we can make students at Eastman feel held in a way that I wish I had more coming into Eastman,” reflected Hunter, who is now working towards a master’s degree in vocal performance at Bard College.
Freddie Kartoz, a vocal major and president of Eastman’s Queer Alliance Club, EQ. Photo provided by Kartoz.
We caught up with the new EQ president, Freddie Kartoz, also a vocal performance major, to ask about what the club has planned for students in the coming academic year.
Q: What is the Eastman Queer Alliance is and how does it support Eastman students?
A: The Eastman Queer Alliance is a student club dedicated to LGBTQ+ empowerment, community building, and activism at ESM. Through our events and concerts every semester, we are able to create safe spaces for queer artistry and camaraderie to flourish.
Q: What kinds of events and support should students look out for this coming academic year?
A: This past year, we hosted collage crafting, a screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show, a paint and sip, a meet and greet, a PowerPoint night, and a queer concert. We were also able to collaborate with Eastman’s Environmental Activism Club. This coming year, our student body can expect similar events, tweaked through student input and community needs as they arise!
For instance, one of our longtime goals is to have community service events and connect with LGBTQ+ religious communities. In the past, we’ve done educational and allyship related events, and we’re hoping that this year we will host some of those as well.
Q: What are your goals as president of the organization?
A: As president of EQ, my primary goal is to make sure that queer people from all walks of Eastman life have the opportunity to attend our events and feel included in our spaces. A music conservatory can be a difficult environment for anyone. Students (queer or not) are sometimes forced to hide who they are, knowing that moving through the world in certain ways will change the opportunities they receive. This can make queer spaces difficult to construct, because it’s imperative to welcome an incredibly diverse set of experiences and needs. This is part of why most of our events (unless otherwise specified) are open to allies. There’s no need to show your “gay card” at the door. As long as you are an active opponent of hatred and bigotry, you are welcome in our spaces.
It’s my goal as president to provide a place where students can let down their guard, open up, and express themselves. I want our community to share advice, stories, and most importantly, to make a space that feels authentic and safe.
Q: Might you share something about your experience of being LGBTQ+ as a student and, more specifically, as a musician?
A: For me, being queer and trans is part of everything I am, in some way. I can no sooner change the structure of my heart’s chambers than I can remove the fabric of queerness from my being. Its gauzy shimmer is everywhere in my internal world, lightly settling in my footsteps with the infinite layers of everything else that makes me who I am.
Sometimes people look at that with disgust. They don’t think it’s “respectable” for this part of me to influence the way I create art. Sometimes, those same people are holding onto things that they’re ashamed of, not even conscious of how heavy it is to carry all that weight. The more I look at it, I realize that coming out allowed me to stop the cycle of shame and fear for myself, and to live in that integrated, light-giving way.
There are challenges, too, in classical music, people who want to dim that light, even if they don’t consciously know they’re doing it. And there are other people who let that light shine, they want to see it in its full glow.
I keep telling myself, “Glow, if it’s what feels right.” You will make a path for someone else’s light, someone who’s walking the same road you once walked.
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To keep up with the Eastman Queer Alliance, follow them on Instagram.