Queering the Mass
Davóne Tines
The Chan National Arts Center
With background sounds of thunder and rain with a roving red spot sweeping in the otherwise darkened arena, a rich, stirring voice begins to intone, “I’m. lost, and I’m calling for my baby; I need you cause I’m so alone.” As the sole singer dressed in white top and black shorts and long stockings solemnly moves between the divided audience to the small, round stage in the arena’s center, his voice slides from remarkable depths to high, soft falsettos — often sustaining a note as it hangs suspended beautifully around us, only to follow with a sudden staccato of broken notes to allow the profound sense of ‘alone’ sink in for all of us in rapt awe.
And thus begins Davóne Tines’ Queering the Mass, the latest installment of Season 2 programming at The Chan National Arts Center that has recently drawn sold-out audiences to acclaimed jazz vocalist Lea Delaria’s Out Rage and will soon host celebrity chef Melissa King’s Lunar New Year Celebration and Broadway star Cheyenne Jackson’s Signs of Life (among many other, equally exciting offerings).
Originating in the late 1980s and 1990s, “queering” is a technique that challenges heteronormativity. In his Queering the Mass, Davóne Tines takes the traditional structure of a Catholic mass and transforms it into a personal, ecumenical exploration of salvation from the confines of the hetero world of traditional religion and norms. With a voice that itself metamorphoses into a myriad of different timbres, ranges, volumes, qualities, Tines has composed his Mass with music ranging across many genres: opera, jazz, spirituals, baroque, classical, and hints of Broadway.
With eyes often closed and movements slow and solemn, Tines delivers the orthodox sections of the mass in repeated phrases of Latin, beginning with a Kyrie that shakes the rafters with a voice deep and cavernous, only to soften to a haunting whispering through lips barely moving. Later in the program, Sanctus begins as a soothing Gregorian chant, eventually opening up first to the most holy of falsetto prayers only to explode into full-voiced tenor.
Between the Latin-infused sections of his mass, Tines sings numbers that further demonstrate his incredible diversity of style and delivery. After Kyrie, Tines leaves the center stage and walks slowly as in meditation to the main stage where his band of two (John Bitoy, piano, and Khari Lucas, electric bass) reside. Approaching the musicians, Tines sings “Receive Me Silent Light,” in both persona and voice quality as if he were now a totally different being from the opening number. The prayerful approach ends in a sudden, high falsetto that is mournfully solicitous in its cry to “receive me.”
Sometimes a single word becomes an entire tome of meaning. With round, purple spots circling the Chan arena (lighting designed by Rob Lockhart), Tines sings “I will fly away to glory,” with the word “fly” increasingly literally taking flight — often through several octaves — to become its own vocal journey and story.
Whether one is a believer of Christian theology or not, it is impossible not to be moved to near tears as Tines sings in sobering, probing verses the pre-Civil-War hymn composed by enslaved African Americans, “Were You There?” (“when they crucified my Lord”). The eighteenth-century, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” is sung in tandem with a recorded set of voices reminding one of a congregation of worshipping souls . “In the Morning When I Rise, Give Me Jesus” becomes a beloved gospel song rendered much like a mother/grandmother might sing while rocking in her chair or like field hands might have once sung while laboring under a hot sun picking cotton.
Missing from the evening’s performance is a program of the songs included and any origin/explanation of each. That is particularly noticed during probably the night’s longest number as various names of saints are sung followed by what sounds like an appeal to Joan (St. Joan?) to “speak boldly.” That final phrase is repeated first almost like a whip commanding to obey, then changing later to elongated pleas rising and falling in waves of solicitation to “speak.”
Tines presents the program in many ways unconnected to the audience around him. It is as if the person in front of us and roaming in the aisles is in private meditation. Only in the final, universally familiar number written in the 1920s for children does the performer’s demeanor towards us as audience completely change.
Singing a striking version of a number that many of us — no matter our religious background — surely sang growing up, “This Little Light of Mine,” Davóne Tines one more time runs the full gamut of vocal styles. From a voice innocent like that of a child to the deepest of bass voices that strikes notes with the power of a hammer, Tines continues the “let it shine” phrases finally to rise through multiple octaves to heavenly heights for an eternity-lengthened “shine” in his unique falsetto. Tines sings now with a huge smile and a look of joy as he finally looks eye-to-eye with us as audience.
An aspect of the evening that works much less well than Tines’ vocals are intermittent voice overs that themselves are quite sudden and incomprehensible. One longer interruption seems to be the mass’ homily as a quote from C.S. Lewis fills the air becomes a sermon with an unseen congregation responding like one might hear in a Black church. While somewhat persuasive in purpose, other interjections work much less well.
Davóne Tines clearly is a contemporary wonder in the world of classical, opera, and jazz, a frequent guest on major stages around the country and a choice by composers like John Adams to star in new works. What was disappointing his first of two nights at the Chan Center was that the published 90-minute show lasted at best half that time (and probably a few minutes less). After a beginning delay of a half hour, it seemed as if the evening had only fully gained its full steam when suddenly it was over, with no explanation why the program was evidently cut short.
Rating: 4 E
Queering the Mass continues for one additional performance, Saturday, February 1, 2025, at the Chan National Queer Arts Center (home of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus0, 170 Valencia Street, San Francisco. Upcoming events at the Chan Center as well as ticket information can be found at https://www.thechancenter.org/.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Chan Center and San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus
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