Portraits of Pride 2025

For over 30 years, David Hodgkins has been Artistic Director of Coro Allegro, Boston’s award-winning LGBTQ+ and allied classical chorus, leading us with a fierce commitment to our mission of building bridges between disparate communities through extraordinary music. The name “Coro Allegro” means “joyful or gay chorus.” When David Hodgkins, a straight man, auditioned to lead this gay chorus at the height of homophobic panic of the AIDS pandemic in 1992, it was an unusual and brave move. One of his mentors, a gay man himself, warned, “You shouldn’t take this job; it is going to limit you as a conductor.” “What it has actually done,” per David himself, “is open up worlds that other conductors could not even come close to.” 

Like David Hodgkins, Coro Allegro was unafraid of taking risks. Musically distinctive, queer-centered, socially conscious, Coro wanted to show the world how phenomenal an LGBTQ+ group could be, and in David Hodgkins found an Artistic Director determined to make us better and make us and our community proud. Under David’s leadership, Coro Allegro is known for fearless performances of courageous works by diverse composers and collaborations with the area’s most exciting arts organizations, from the Boston premiere of William Grant Still’s And They Lynched Him on a Tree to the world premiere of Andrea Clearfield’s HERE I AM: I AM HERE, based on letters to a trans child and to a survivor of conversion therapy. Together David Hodgkins and Coro Allegro have introduced local and international audiences to 30 world premieres, 20 of them commissioned by or for Coro Allegro—a record that earned, among other awards, the prestigious Chorus America/ASPAC Adventurous Programming Award in 2019. Gramophone praised Coro Allegro’s recordings on the Navona label for introducing “deeply affecting pieces and meaningful additions to the choral repertoire.” Coro’s newest release WE ARE HERE features Eric Banks’ Aluta Continua: The passion of David Kato Kisule, about the slain Ugandan LGBTQ+ activist, and Kareem Roustom’s Rage Against the Tyrant(s) based on protest chants and poetry of the Arab Spring. All 20 of the works David has helped Coro commission are by LGBTQ+, BIPOC, or women composers, or those from other historically silenced communities.

Composer Fred Onovwerosuoke, speaking for Coro’s award-winning Amplifying Black Voices series, recalled Viola Davis’s words when accepting her first Oscar: “There is no shortage of Black artists—all we need is an opportunity.” “That,” said FredO “is what Coro Allegro and David Hodgkins gave me, an opportunity.” 

In 2008 David Hodgkins and Coro Allegro established the Daniel Pinkham Award in honor of the acclaimed gay Boston composer, given annually in recognition of outstanding contributions to classical music and to the LGBTQ+ community. As 2011 Pinkham Award winner, composer Patricia Van Ness, wrote: David’s “courage to program music considered unprogrammable by others has been a boon to many grateful composers and brought you awards from international music organizations and acclaim from audiences and critics. Yet along with all the awards and acclaim, the single thing that has made you so special to me is your hugely caring nature toward me and others. I have seen how you care for your musicians and want to help when they are ill or in need. You care so deeply about the music you choose to perform, become so at one with it, that you are able to interpret the music with sensitivity and passion, and inspire your musicians to great performances.” Thank you David, for bringing that passionate commitment to each Coro Allegro rehearsal or performance, for always showing up outside of them for me and others in our Coro Family when times are hard, and for inspiring us to breathe together and make music that sings with pride.