Tom Wilson Weinberg

Tom Wilson Weinberg (born April 12, 1945) is an American songwriter, composer of musical theater, cabaret performer and LGBTQ activist.

Early life

Tom Wilson Weinberg was born Thomas Arnold Wilson in Syracuse, NY, to Dorothy Arnold Wilson and Jerome Martin Wilson. He added Weinberg, his paternal grandfather's birth name, in 1982. Tom began his music studies in elementary school with clarinet and piano. His interest in musical theater and revues began during his college years when he performed and wrote songs for the University of Pennsylvania's Mask and Wig Club. He received a BA and MS in Ed from the University of Pennsylvania.

Career

After college, Tom began focusing his songs on LGBT issues, mixing humor and satire with commentary on social discrimination and the queer community’s response to homophobic mainstream media and legislators. His career began with performances at house concerts, coffee houses and college campuses. He produced two solo albums of his gay-themed songs, Gay Name Game (1979) and All-American Boy (1982). He continued performing while beginning to write musical revues and book musicals in the 1980s.

Activism

In 1973, Tom joined the Philadelphia Gay Activists Alliance and co-founded Giovanni’s Room, a gay and feminist bookstore. Later the same year he co-founded Philadelphia's Gay Coffeehouse and published and edited the Philadelphia Weekly Gayzette. In 1974, he became a founding Board member of the Eromin Center, Philadelphia's first psychotherapy center for LGBT people.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn9|[9] Governor Milton Shapp appointed Tom to the Pennsylvania Counsel for Sexual Minorities in 1975.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn10|[10] Tom and his partner, John, moved to Minneapolis in 1981 and the next year they co-founded the Minnesota AIDS Project, along with a third co-founder.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn11|[11] They moved to Boston in 1984 where they joined Foster Equality and The Duke (Dukakis) Watch. Moving back to Philadelphia, Tom volunteered at Thrift for AIDS from 1992 to 97, and at the Attic Youth Center, facilitating music and writing groups from 1997 to 2007. He served as President of the Attic Youth Center Board of Directors from 2003 to 2004Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn12|[12] and volunteered at ACLU-PA from 2017 to 2020.

Personal life

Tom met John Whyte in 1973 and, after a 40-year engagement, they married in 2013. Whyte is a physician scientist and founding director of a rehabilitation research institute.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn13|[13] With their friends, Jade and Sue, a family grew. Jesse was born in 1992 and Max in 1995.

Theater

Weinberg’s first full-length theater pieces were topical, political and satirical musical revues. Ten Percent Revue, premiered in Boston in 1985. Reviews in The Boston GlobeDraft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn14|[14], The Boston HeraldDraft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn15|[15], Gay Community NewsDraft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn16|[16], and Bay WindowsDraft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn17|[17] led to four ten-week summer runs in Provincetown, MA (1986, 87, 88 and 94), produced by Laura Green, who then took the show to New York for an 11-month Off-Broadway run, Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn18|[18] beginning at the Susan Block Theatre and later moving to the Actor’s Playhouse.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn19|[19] Green also assembled a road company and took the show to numerous cities.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn20|[20]^{,Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn21|[21]} Tom’s next musical revue, Get Used To It!, was produced in New York by Tony Award winner John GlinesDraft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn22|[22] and the show played in a succession of cities, including PhiladelphiaDraft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn23|[23] and Washington DC.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn24|[24] Tom’s book musicals include Eleanor and Hick, set during the FDR administration and centered on the relationship of The First Lady and news reporter, Lorena Hickok. The show was first staged at the William Way Community CenterDraft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn25|[25] and later at the Walnut Street Theatre, Studio 3,Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn26|[26] workshopped in New York, and produced in Cherry Grove.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn27|[27] Sixty Years with Bruhs and Gean grew out of a commission by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, premiering at Carnegie HallDraft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn28|[28] and later performed at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Paramount Theater in Asbury Park, NJ, and by the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus at the Wilma Theater.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn29|[29] In its full length, the show has been seen at The Duplex in New York, The Ethical Society in Philadelphia, and at The Provincetown Playhouse.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn30|[30] The show follows two men who met in 1929 and lived through the Great Depression, WWII, the McCarthy era, Stonewall and beyond. Oscar Visits Walt premiered at Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia and revived at The Carriage House on the University of Pennsylvania campus.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn31|[31] The poets had two private meetings in 1882; Weinberg shares the details. The show was part of the city-wide Whitman200, celebrating the poet’s 200^th birthday.

Cabaret

Tom’s home venue was and is the William Way LGBT Community Center, where he staged dozens of cabaret shows, sometimes solo and often with a diverse team of singers. Highlights included Foot Locker, The Teachings of Chairman Rick (spoofing Senator Santorum) Philly Fringe,Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn32|[32] Our Family Meeting (responding to Pope Francis’s visit to Philadelphia),Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn33|[33] Body Politik,Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn34|[34] and Cabaret Vérité, a series of 10 shows, including Songs at 75.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn35|[35]

Recordings (alternative)

· Gay Name Game (LP, Aboveground Records, 1979)

· All-American Boy (LP, Aboveground Records, 1982)

· Ten Percent Revue (original Boston cast on CD and tape, Aboveground Records, 1986)

· Get Used To It! (New York cast recording on CD, Aboveground Records, 1993)

· Don’t Mess With Mary (the official album of Stonewall 25, produced by Wayne Barker and financed by New York’s The Monster; CD, Aboveground Records, 1994)

· In 1996, his song, Lesbian Seagull, appeared in the Paramount/MTV film, Beavis and Butt-head Do America.Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn36|[36] It was featured on the platinum-selling soundtrack, sung by Engelbert Humperdinck and released as a single with Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Love Rollercoaster.

· His songs have also appeared on albums by LGBT choruses and individual recording artists.

Book mentions

All Music Guide, M. Erlewine, S. Bultman (Eds.), San Francisco, Miller Freeman Inc, 1992, ISBN 0-87930-264-x

Grega W, Jones, R. Out Sounds, The Gay and Lesbian Music Alternative. New York City, Pop Front Books, 1996, ISBN 0-9639871-7-8

Harwood G. The Oldest Gay Couple in America, A Birch Lancer Press Book, Published by Carol Publishing Group, 1997, ISBN 1-55972-426-9

Kohn B, Matusow A, Barry and Alice, Portrait of a Bisexual Marriage Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1980, ISBN 0-13-056150-9

Preston J, The Big Gay Book, A Plume Book, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Books, USA Inc., 1991, ISBN 0-452-26621-1

Stein M. City of Sisterly & Brotherly Loves, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2000, ISBN 0-226-77179-2

Wilson Weinberg T. Ten Percent Revue, New York City, Kansas City, New Musical Theatre Library, 1990. ISBN 1-877944-00-9

Awards

• Bessie Smith Award (Boston), 1990
• Drama-Logue Award (Los Angeles), 1991
• Golden Gull Awards (Provincetown), 1996, 1997
• OutMusic Heritage Award (New York), 2006Draft:Tom Wilson Weinberg#%20edn41|[41]
• Weinberg is a member of The Purple Circuit and ASCAP.

External links

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