Jon Sims Center for the Arts

About Us
Jon Sims Center for the Arts began in 1978 with the formation of the Gay Freedom Day Marching Band. Founded by Jon R. Sims (who died of AIDS in 1984), the Band was the first openly, publicly identified gay cultural art group in the world.

In 1978, a young musician and performer by the name of Jon Reed Sims decided that the local Gay Freedom Day Parade lacked sound and color. After posting flyers around San Francisco two months before the parade, Sims managed to round up several wind and percussion instrumentalists to form a marching band. Although it was only supposed to last through the end of Pride season, the band decided that it was having too much fun and formed a permanent organization-- the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corp.

The success of the SFGFD MB &TC inspired Wayne Love to form the Great American Yankee Freedom Band in Los Angeles and Nancy Corporon to start the New York Gay Community Marching Band (now the Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps) in 1979. Jon also founded the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. in 1978, the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, and developed, directly or indirectly, many other community choruses, bands, swing units, ragtime ensembles, chorales, orchestras and other musical units-- all designed to inspire and promote lesbian/gay culture.

Jon's boundless energy and enthusiasm helped spark the formation of the Lesbian and Gay Bands of America, which held their first joint concert in 1984 at the Hollywood Bowl in a showcase featuringRita Moreno. Unfortunately, Jon could not be there--trapped in a hospital bed with toxoplasmosis, he was one of the first of many gay men lost to AIDS.

Jon passed a short time later, but his music lives on in all the world's lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender choruses, bands and ensembles. Anywhere there are gay men singing of freedom, lesbians playing Ma Rainey's blues on trumpets or queer marching bands parading down main streets all over the world, Jon's legacy lives on.

One of Jon's many dreams was to organize a performing arts organization that would bring together lesbian and gay artists until such time as these distinctions were no longer necessary. Our mission remains true to his vision: to serve the educational, social and artistic needs of the lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender communities.