Atrium Sessions: "Walt Whitman in 1989," featuring Efraín Solís and Bryndon Hassman

“I connect so much to how this piece can help us heal from wounds of the past,” baritone Efraín Solís says of “Walt Whitman in 1989,” a song composed by Chris DeBlasio with poetry by Perry Brass.

Upon returning from a summer retreat in Taos in 1991, Chris was excited to share this new piece with his partner and future husband, William Berger.

William recalls, “He played it for John Corigliano next, who told him he’d finally found his own voice with this song. He was known to have AIDS and everyone — including Perry, me and Chris himself — felt a sort of 'any day now' kind of sword of Damocles hanging over this piece. It may actually be his own requiem in many ways, or rather, I think that's what he felt when he wrote it." Chris passed away two years later.

Poet Perry Brass recently shared this with Efraín: "This piece ties together so much from the gay past and the human past. In a time of turmoil and tragedy, due to AIDS, like we have gone through with COVID. Both of these pandemics have been terrible, but for gay men, AIDS was worse, because no one could even talk about it for so long. We did have 'the wars of hard tongues and closed minds' that our community had to fight. In some ways, COVID has produced the same challenges — and we have to come up to it and not lose our closeness, again."

“Walt Whitman in 1989” is featured in The AIDS Quilt Songbook, from Chris’s song cycle “All the Way Through Evening — Five Nocturnes.” To learn more about Efraín and discover more performances, please visit the Atrium Sessions website: sfopera.com/atriumsessions #AtriumSessions