Currnt | Stéphane Gay

Contents:

• STEPHANE GAY
• STEPHANE GAY
• STEPHANIE E. GAY, PA
• A DANCER PROPOSED TO HIS BOYIEND IN LIKELY THE FIRST GAY MARRIAGE PROPOSAL ON ITALIAN TV
• IS STEPHANIE ZIMBALIST GAY?
• STéPHANE ROSE GAY RUMORS?ONLE POLL SHOWS 72 PERCENT DON’T BELIEVE HE’S GAY

STEPHANE GAY

BOYS!, the platform om The Ltle Black Gallery to promote queer and gay photography, is openg a new onle exhib featurg the work of French photographer Stephane Gizard, known for his "gentle, kdly eye" which ptur "the bety and agily of his subjectn, which have clud many celebri and strangers. As the rerr ran, my host—known for his fierce telligence and for the refement of his playg—kept referrg to “that faggot” who had produced a somewhat homoerotic documentary of the once-betiful tmpeter and sger. The jazz world is one of the last cultural ontiers of old-fashned macho, and , homophobia ns rampant.

Sce terviewg that pianist, I’ve met a multu of jazz figur who pri themselv on soulfulns and sensivy, yet are as sensive as rednecks on the subject of homosexualy—pecially s prence jazz, which is not nsirable. One saxophonist, a gay man his early 60s, sums up what he se as the persistg attu: “If you are gay, you nnot be playg this mic that requir you to have a much higher level of ttosterone.

STEPHANE GAY

” A veteran sger who has worked wh European big bands remembers walkg out on one of them, fur at beg “harassed” by homophobic slurs.

STEPHANIE E. GAY, PA

“Gays are the last whippg post society, ” he says. Some attentn was drawn to the qutn the ’90s, when three outstandg jazz micians—pianist Fred Hersch, vibraphonist Gary Burton and sger/pianist Andy Bey—all me out publicly as gay men.

Two years earlier me Lh Life, David Hajdu’s bgraphy of arranger-poser Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967), one of the very few openly gay jazzmen of his (or any) time. But Strayhorn worked mostly behd the scen, and until recently was easy to thk that jazz, like the Boy Suts, had no gay element at all.

A DANCER PROPOSED TO HIS BOYIEND IN LIKELY THE FIRST GAY MARRIAGE PROPOSAL ON ITALIAN TV

“I don’t even know a jazz mician who’s a homosexual—not a real jazz mician, ” Dizzy Gillpie was quoted as sayg.

IS STEPHANIE ZIMBALIST GAY?

Grover Sal, who teach jazz studi at Stanford Universy and the Berkeley Jazz School northern California, voted eight pag of Gene Le’ Jazzletter to the qutn: “Why Is Jazz Not Gay Mic?

STéPHANE ROSE GAY RUMORS?ONLE POLL SHOWS 72 PERCENT DON’T BELIEVE HE’S GAY

” Notg that the jazz muny was “long unrivalled for s blhe difference to extrem of human portment, ” he nclud that gay people jt weren’t broad-md or hip enough to appreciate jazz. (Gays had kept jazz out of the mil theater, he add, by “impos[g] [their] tast, perceptns, and sensibili on the 90 percent straight world.

“I have que a long list of gay jazz micians, some and some out of the closet, ” he says. ” It may be te, as jazz wrer Chris Albertson—himself gay—not, that “gay people tend to prefer the divas—Billie, Sarah. One of the most important arranger/posers swg history (notably wh the Woody Herman orchtra) and an equally renowned Broadway arranger, Burns, now 79, refully hid his homosexualy those days.