He plans to remain an activist on concerns of the gay community, however. It's a matter of social justice. I saw the Chorus as a primary thrust of that social activity, because music can break down barriers in places that speeches and books and parades do not. Bailey, who came to Pomona in 1982 after teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Yale School of Music, directed the Pomona College Choir and Glee Club for 16 years. His favorite piece of choral music is Britten's War Requiem , which draws upon the works of Wilfred Owen, a poet who was killed by machine-gun fire in World War I, a week before the Armistice.
Choral music is a place where students can find their own voice.
I think they found, particularly in the Glee Club but also in the Choir, a sense of belonging in a way that happens in theatre, and that I think should happen in every class at a liberal arts college. There was a sense of family that was created in those ensembles that was, in some ways, more important than the music that they made together. And I think that it did inform the music-making, and made it deeper and more loving. So singing, to be truly free, means that you have to be truly free inside yourself. The second thing is that singing almost always has to be done with someone else.