Music & Concerts
D.C.-area native returns to region for Chanticleer tour
Zachary Burgess says singing with classical group is a joy


Zachary Burgess says he had a strong connection with music at a young age. (Photo by Sanaz Fahimi; Butterfly Photography)
Chanticleer
A Chanticleer Christmas
Saturday, Nov. 25
George Mason University’s Center for the Arts
Fairfax, Va.
Sunday, Nov. 26
Hylton Performing Arts Center
Manassas, Va.
Tuesday, Nov. 28
Weinberg Center for the Arts
Frederick, Md.
Full details at chanticleer.org
There were strong signs that the music bug had bitten a young Zachary Burgess years before he knew what was happening or thought anything of it.
A family story his mother likes to tell is how a young Zach joined Vanessa Williams full-throttle in the movie theater for “Colors of the Wind” from Disney’s “Pocahontas.”
“I could have cared less if anyone was listening or if I was annoying anyone,” Burgess, 30, says. “I was having the time of my life. It’s so funny. There are other similar stories. Things I don’t even remember. I’d be 4 and would make them gather around in the living room of my grandma’s house. It really has been in my DNA since I was little.”
In July, Burgess, a McLean, Va., native, moved to San Francisco to accept his big break — one of the coveted 12 slots in the male classical vocal group Chanticleer, an a cappella, Grammy-winning ensemble celebrating its 40th season. The choir is just starting its Christmas tour which has performances in Fairfax, Manassas and Frederick in the coming days.
Joining, he says, was an honor. He has a one-year contract with the group.
“I was relieved that the hard work I had put into my musical journey was starting to pay off,” he says.
It came at an interesting time, Burgess says. A 2013 graduate of the Eastman School of Music, the bass-baritone returned to the Washington area and was balancing a burgeoning local music career with his work at the Apple Store in Tysons Corner. Both careers were going fairly well. He’d been promoted from the Genius Bar at Apple into working as an inventory specialist and says there was potential there with a job he says he loved.
Simultaneously, he’d gained some traction in the music world, too. He took first prize in the Vocal Arts D.C. Art Song Discovery Competition, gave solo recitals at the Phillips Collection and the Kennedy Center, made multiple appearances with D.C. Public Opera, the Alexandria Choral Society and more.
But there were also a few bumps in the road. After a particularly dry year musically in 2015, Burgess says he “hit a fork” and decided to give music another full-on pursuit by finding a voice teacher (Elizabeth Daniels), a coach (Joy Schreier) and performing as often as he could.
“That’s really what has propelled me to now,” he says. “From then to now, the trajectory has just been up, up, up, up, up. Which is interesting because I’d just started to feel I’d kind of found my voice in the D.C. area and was starting to get some traction there.”
He’d auditioned for Chanticleer in February, 2016 but didn’t get the call until about a year and a half later. Some singers stay in the group a few seasons. Another is in his 28th (and final) season. The group performs everything from Renaissance, baroque, spirituals and contemporary compositions in configurations ranging from simple SATB harmony to complex arrangements where each of the 12 singers might be singing a different part.
Burgess says he wasn’t sure initially if his voice would blend well with the ensemble since he was more on a solo singing type of path, but he says so far, it’s been satisfying and he’s learned a lot about when to project and when to hold back depending on the performance space.
Upon moving to the Bay Area, Burgess had five weeks of rehearsal to learn two programs’ worth of repertoire. He went from an average of singing about 90 minutes per day to four-hour, Monday–Friday rehearsals with the group, which he says was “the biggest shock” to his voice.
After a summer tour that took him to Spain, Germany, Poland, France and more and a busy fall with many U.S. concerts, it’s time for the Christmas tour. He was surprised to learn later that his mom had some Chanticleer Christmas CDs in her collection. They’d been there for years and he’d heard them but didn’t make the connection that this was the group he’d auditioned for.
“Now that I’ve stepped up to this big platform and seen this reaction, you now, you’re touching another person and that’s why I do this,” Burgess says. “It’s not about me, it’s not about fulfilling my own destiny. Now I get to enjoy just sort of delivering that talent and that passion and taking someone out of their world for a minute. When you know you’re emotionally connecting with a total stranger, you’re so vulnerable and you’re putting yourself out there, but to have that connection is really amazing.”
Burgess, who came out at 14 (“I was the flyest kid in the neighborhood rolling out of my parent’s driveway in my Barbie jeep as a toddler”), says there is a “healthy mix” of gay members in Chanticleer.
Burgess is single and says he’s enjoying navigating San Francisco gay life.
So far, what stands out most about San Francisco living versus D.C.?
“Everybody here is young, everybody has a tech job and nobody asks what you do, which is like the second question you get asked always in D.C.,” Burgess says. “I didn’t really know what to expect moving to what is probably the gayest city in America. … I’m such an East Coast person, very structured, very type A, so it’s been interesting getting used to a lot of people who are more laid back with their time.”

Zachary Burgess (Photo by Sanaz Fahimi; Butterfly Photography)
Music & Concerts
Underdog glorious: a personal remembrance of Jill Sobule
Talented singer, songwriter died in house fire on May 1

I’ve always prided myself on being the kind of music consumer who purchased music on impulse. When I stumbled across “Things Here Are Different,” Jill Sobule’s 1990 MCA Records debut album on vinyl in a favorite Chicago record store, I bought it without knowing anything about her. This was at a time when we didn’t have our phones in our pockets to search for information about the artist on the internet. The LP stayed in my collection until, as vinyl was falling out of fashion, I replaced it with a CD a few years later.
Early in my career as an entertainment journalist, I received a promo copy of Jill’s eponymous 1995 Atlantic Records album. That year, Atlantic Records was one of the labels at the forefront of signing and heavily promoting queer artists, including Melissa Ferrick and Extra Fancy, and its roster included the self-titled album by Jill. It was a smart move, as the single “I Kissed A Girl” became a hit on radio and its accompanying video (featuring Fabio!) was in heavy rotation on MTV (when they still played videos).
Unfortunately for Jill, she was a victim of record label missteps. When 1997’s wonderful “Happy Town” failed to repeat the success, Atlantic dumped her. That was Atlantic’s loss, because her next album, the superb “Pink Pearl” contained “Heroes” and “Mexican Wrestler,” two of her most beloved songs. Sadly, Beyond Music, the label that released that album ceased to exist after just a few years. To her credit, the savvy Jill had also started independently releasing music (2004’s “The Folk Years”). That was a smart move because her next major-label release, the brilliant “Underdog Victorious” on Artemis Records, met a similar fate when that label folded.
With her 2009 album “California Years,” Jill launched her own indie label, Pinko Records, on which she would release two more outstanding full-length discs, 2014’s “Dottie’s Charms” (on which she collaborated with some of her favorite writers, including David Hadju, Rick Moody, Mary Jo Salter, and Jonathan Lethem), and 2018’s stunning “Nostalgia Kills.” Jill’s cover of the late Warren Zevon’s “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” on “Nostalgia Kills” was particularly poignant as she had toured with him as an opening act.
Jill was a road warrior, constantly on tour, and her live shows were something to behold. My first interview with Jill took place at the Double Door in Chicago in early August of 1995, when she was the opening act for legendary punk band X. She had thrown her back out the previous day and was diagnosed with a herniated disc. To be comfortable, she was lying down on a fabulous-‘50s sofa. “I feel like I’m at my shrink’s,” she said to me, “Do you want me to talk about my mother?”
That sense of humor, which permeated and enriched her music, was one of many reasons to love Jill. I was privileged to interview her for seven of her albums. Everything you would want to know about her was right there in her honest lyrics, in which she balanced her distinctive brand of humor with serious subject matter. Drawing on her life experiences in songs such as “Bitter,” “Underachiever,” “One of These Days,” “Freshman,” “Jetpack,” “Nothing To Prove,” “Forbidden Thoughts of Youth,” “Island of Lost Things,” “Where Do I Begin,” “Almost Great,” and “Big Shoes,” made her songs as personal as they were universal, elicited genuine affection and concern from her devoted fans.
While she was a consummate songwriter, Jill also felt equally comfortable covering songs made famous by others, including “Just A Little Lovin’” (on the 2000 Dusty Springfield tribute album “Forever Dusty”) and “Stoned Soul Picnic” (from the 1997 Laura Nyro tribute album “Time and Love”). Jill also didn’t shy away from political subject matter in her music with “Resistance Song,” “Soldiers of Christ,” “Attic,” “Heroes,” “Under the Disco Ball,” and the incredible “America Back” as prime examples.
Here’s something else worth mentioning about Jill. She was known for collaboration skills. As a songwriter, she maintained a multi-year creative partnership with Robin Eaton (“I Kissed A Girl” and many others), as well as Richard Barone, the gay frontman of the renowned band The Bongos. Jill’s history with Barone includes performing together at a queer Octoberfest event in Chicago in 1996. Writer and comedian Julie Sweeney, of “SNL” and “Work in Progress” fame was another Chicago collaborator with Sobule (Sweeney lives in a Chicago suburb), where they frequently performed their delightful “The Jill and Julia Show.” John Doe, of the aforementioned band X, also collaborated with Jill in the studio (“Tomorrow Is Breaking” from “Nostalgia Kills”), as well as in live performances.
On a very personal note, in 2019, when I was in the process of arranging a reading at the fabulous NYC gay bookstore Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, I reached out to Jill and asked her if she would like to be on the bill with me. We alternated performing; I would read a couple of poems, and Jill would sing a couple of songs. She even set one of my poems to music, on the spot.
Jill had an abundance of talent, and when she turned her attention to musical theater, it paid off in a big way. Her stage musical “F*ck 7th Grade,” a theatrical piece that seemed like the next logical step in her career, had its premiere at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre in the fall of 2020, during the height of the pandemic. The unique staging (an outdoor drive-in stage at which audience members watched from their cars) was truly inspired. “F*ck 7th Grade” went on to become a New York Times Critic’s pick, as well as earning a Drama Desk nomination.
In honor of the 30th anniversary of Jill’s eponymous 1995 album, reissue label Rhino Records is re-releasing it on red vinyl. Jill and I had been emailing each other to arrange a time for an interview. We even had a date on the books for the third week of May.
When she died in a house fire in Minnesota on May 1 at age 66, Jill received mentions on network and cable news shows. She was showered with attention from major news outlets, including obits in the New York Times and Rolling Stone (but not Pitchfork, who couldn’t be bothered to review her music when she was alive). Is it wrong to think that if she’d gotten this much attention when she was alive she could have been as big as Taylor Swift? I don’t think so.
Music & Concerts
Tom Goss returns with ‘Bear Friends Furever Tour’
Out singer/songwriter to perform at Red Bear Brewing Co.

Singer Tom Goss will bring his “Bear Friends Furever Tour” to D.C. on Sunday, June 8 at 8 p.m. at Red Bear Brewing Co.
Among the songs he will perform will be “Bear Soup,” the fourth installment in his beloved bear song anthology series. Following fan favorites like “Bears,” “Round in All the Right Places,” and “Nerdy Bear,” this high-energy, bass-thumping banger celebrates body positivity, joyful indulgence, and the vibrant spirit of the bear subculture.
For more details, visit Tom Goss’s website.

Aussie pop icon Kylie Minogue brings her acclaimed “Tension” world tour to D.C. next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Capital One Arena. Tickets are still available at Ticketmaster.
The show features songs spanning her long career, from 1987 debut single, “The Loco-Motion,” to “Padam, Padam” from her album, “Tension.”