The Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps (LGBAC) is a community band based in New York City. Founded on September 24, 1979 as the New York Gay Community Marching Band, LGBAC is the third-oldest community band in the United States dedicated to serving the LGBT community. The mission of LGBAC is to provide the lesbian and gay community with a supportive and friendly environment for musical and artistic expression and, through performance, to promote social acceptance, equality, and harmony for all. Membership is all-inclusive, predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, and the band welcomes heterosexual players as well. The band performs year-round as both a concert band and a marching band.
As a concert band, LGBAC traditionally produces two concerts each year, one in the fall and the other in the spring. Chamber music concerts are offered occasionally.
As a marching band, LGBAC marches in a wide variety of events, predominantly but not limited to gay pride marches, July 4 parades, and the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. The marching band includes a featured baton twirler, ballet dancers, color guard and honor guard.
Famous quotes containing the words lesbian, gay, big, apple and/or corps:
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)
“Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!”
—Gregory Corso (b. 1930)
“Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire. This agglomeration which called itself and still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)