In September 2019, I began working as the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus in Greenville, SC. In March of 2020, we had planned to present a concert entitled Shining Through: An Evening of Story and Song. Throughout the program, chorus members would tell personal stories about the challenges of growing up gay and how they overcame those challenges to live as proud men unashamed of their true colors.

The COVID-19 pandemic shut us down two weeks before we were to present that concert. In our original concert, we had an arrangement of “True Colors” that I felt didn’t have enough weight to be the title song of the program. So during the shutdown, an era of Zoom rehearsals when I was often scrambling for ideas to keep us making music, I thought, “Why not literally make some music together?”

It started with a workshop where we listened to Cyndi Lauper’s original version, and the guys started pitching ideas for what our arrangement could sound like. We wanted to preserve the integrity and ideas from the original while adding our own flare. We would discuss, I would arrange, I would present, they would offer feedback, and we would repeat. Their input as I was writing proved to be invaluable.

In the spring of 2022, we were finally able to present the Shining Through concert, where we premiered this arrangement.

– Shelton