Both Sides Now

On May 29, 2026, at Allendale United Methodist Church in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gay Men's Chorus of Tampa Bay turned the fifth slot of "Love in Technicolor" over to two of its own. Soloists Josh Smith and Vic Omila stepped forward for Noah Stolee's arrangement of Joni Mitchell's 1967 standard "Both Sides Now," a song Mitchell wrote at twenty-three that has since been sung by everyone from Judy Collins to Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles.

Stolee's setting draws on that Groban-Bareilles duet conception, building the song as a conversation rather than a solo confession. The arrangement keeps Mitchell's plainspoken melody intact while opening space for two voices to trade and intertwine, letting the harmony bloom on the refrain's hard-won "I really don't know life at all."

Smith and Omila handled that intimacy with care. Smith's warm, grounded lines anchored the verses, while Omila floated above with a brighter, more searching tone; on the choruses the two locked into close thirds that felt less like performance than shared remembering. Their phrasing breathed together, and the dynamic restraint they kept in the early verses made the final swell land with real weight.

The church's resonant, slightly reverberant nave gave the duet a glow, sustaining the long held vowels and letting silences ring without going hollow. The room was hushed through the verses, and a wave of applause met the last fading chord, the kind of response reserved for a song that has just told the truth quietly.

Placed within Act 1's "Love & Heartbreak" arc, "Both Sides Now" offered the evening its clearest meditation on how love looks different once you've lived it. In two voices wrestling honestly with illusion and clarity, the moment spoke to the chorus's deeper work, chosen family bearing witness to one another's hard-earned wisdom.