On Sunday, January 8, we musicians from the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band performed for the inauguration of Mayor Ed Lee, sworn in that day as the 43rd mayor of San Francisco by Diane Feinstein. The band was one of many local performers to provide entertainment, including the San Francisco Symphony, the Girls and Boys Choruses of San Francisco, Leung’s White Crane Dragon and Lion Dance Association, World Arts West, Beach Blanket Babylon and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. It was a symbolic nod to our city’s diversity, and a fitting gesture from Mayor Lee, whose inaugural speech emphasized the need to come together with civility.
There’s nothing quite like playing in the City Hall rotunda. You take your place at the top of the Grand Staircase, dwarfed by neoclassical carvings. And when you play, the music ricochets around the marble halls and columns, circling the inside of the enormous dome until you find you’re accompanying your own echo in a room almost as old as the City itself. The inauguration was attended by every living mayor of San Francisco – Diane Feinstein, Art Agnos, Frank Jordan, Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom, even George Moscone’s widow, Gina – and by national and state officials including Nancy Pelosi, Mark Leno, Kamala Harris, Tom Ammiano. In that setting before that audience, it felt like the music echoed back through history. The effect was haunting.
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