Grammy award-winning vocalist and songwriter Melissa Manchester will grace the stage with the San Diego Symphony at the Summer Pops this Friday, Aug. 28 and Saturday, Aug. 29, in a special guest performance.

The songstress has been popular among gay audiences since the 1970s, when she did back-up for Bette Midler as one of the Staggering Harlette’s.

Her Pops concert will include her hits: “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” “Midnight Blue,” “Through The Eyes Of Love” and “Whenever I Call You Friend,” along with a tribute to the late, great Dusty Springfield.

Manchester recently sat down with the Gay & Lesbian Times to chat about her upcoming concert, her successful career, spanning four decades, and her musical influences, including Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Edith Piaf and Ella Fitzgerald.

Gay & Lesbian Times: What draws you to San Diego and performing with the San Diego Symphony Summer Pops?

MM: Oh I love it. It’s always a thrill to perform with a prestigious orchestra, where you know that your music will be given its all by the magnificent players. My dear friend Susan Guthrie Lawrence invited me and made this happen. I’m very touched. We’re old buddies.

GLT: Everybody has a dream. Your dream was to play Carnegie Hall. What was that like?

MM: Well, it was a long time ago, and I certainly wish it would happen again. I look forward to that moment. When it happens so early in your career, and it’s overwhelming, you’re not quite present in your life and you miss certain things. It was divine, and playing Radio City was divine. I hope to have that opportunity again.

GLT: What advice do you give young people who have a dream?

MM: The world is very different than the one I grew up in. We’re in the digital info. age, and I was certainly brought up in the acoustic age of seriously hard dues paying. What I would tell somebody is: From the moment that you think you want this, you have to know that you want this just about more than anything else. It’s right up there with the next breath. You may not know specifically what you want, but it’s important to know the quality of the life you want. For me, on one level I knew what I wanted since I was 5 years old, because that’s when I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing Gershwin. On the other hand, the next sort of leap was when I was 15. I was going to a high school of performing arts, and my secret wish was to be discovered by Richard Rogers or Paul McCartney.

GLT: That is a very influential time in life. What about it resonates with you?

MM: I wanted a sparkling life and what that meant for me (I was living in New York City at the time, which was the absolutely perfect place for me) was to be in the company of creative people. What that meant to me was to find any reason to be in the company of creative people. That meant parking cars for a little theatre company, being an usherette at the Vivian Beaumont theatre in Lincoln Center or singing commercials or doing street theater. It was all of that. When I was 17, I knocked on the door where they were filming Sesame Street the first season and I said I’ll do anything. They said sure come on in. They took me to the editing room, and I spent a few months there. I just wandered around the streets looking for adventures, and I found them. My friend Joel was sort of nutty like I was. We would go to theatre camp and eavesdrop on people having interesting discussions and all that stuff. It’s that; it’s looking for the next adventure and that’s pretty much what my life has been – looking for the next creative adventure. Serious fun.

GLT: What is it that allows you or an artist to maintain their relevance?

MM: I can’t speak for any of my lovely colleagues who have had extraordinary careers. I was taught song writing by Paul Simon, and I worked with Bette Midler and did lots of commercials with Barry Manilow. We all have a big dream for ourselves. Part of my dream, which was a big personal risk, was to leave the industry for 10 years to raise my kids. And I just think we have a light inside of us that does not dim. It was very interesting to come back into the industry. It’s a big leap of faith to leave your career; it’s a big leap of faith to try to come back. And to realize on the surface that just about everything about your industry has changed.

GLT: It did change. How did you respond?

MM: It left me sort of understruck. All the old paradigms that used to work for me somehow shifted. I didn’t recognize the landscape when I came back. I’m somebody who regards making an album as working on a very large canvas and making an artistic statement. Here we are back in the age of singles, when you can just download one song, which forces artists to say, ‘Oh why bother I’ll just do one song.’ And I’m thinking how the hell do you do that now again? I forgot. It’s interesting. Little by little, I’m easing my way into this age. We put up a Web site and it’s a beautiful Web site. But now I want to go on Facebook and Twitter, where I can get lots of people instantaneously – who hopefully won’t e-mail me back. I don’t want to hear their comments about what I’m wearing or the last time they saw it or how fat I am or whatever. I just want to put up the information and hope it’s a really swell idea.

GLT: Do you find technology is scary?

MM: It is on a certain level. My kids know a lot more about this world than I do. That said, I’ve got lots more time and experience on them. We’re hopefully of mild amusement to each other.

GLT: You made the transition from music to acting. Do you have a place that you’re most comfortable?

MM: They all serve a different purpose. Overall, I simply enjoy being on the stage – period! Telling a theatrical story is the deep end of the pool. You’re doing it eight times a week. You’re existing in a linear way. You’re telling a story from beginning to end. Night after night. Including two times on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Or if you’re on the road, Wednesdays and Saturdays. I learned that when I took over the national tour of Song and Dance after Bernadette Peters had done it on Broadway. I had never done theater before and song and dance by Andrew Lloyd Weber was really the deep end because Act 1 is a solo performance. There’s nobody else on the stage. Having never been in theater per se, loving it as an audience member was extraordinary, because I learned about all kinds of deep reservoirs of strength and spirituality I needed to tap into. And learning about discipline and all of that. It was quite amazing.

GLT: You have been in the business for so long but you are still able to grow.

MM: That’s the trick about it. The artistic life always enables you to have a new creative adventure. That’s the truth about life. Whether you sell insurance or not, there are always opportunities to turn around and find yourself interested in some creative adventure. You find yourself waking to say, ‘Oh I don’t care if I’m 87 [with] what seems like a really interesting idea.’ You hope that for everybody’s life. It’s also just the way I was raised. My parents were fabulous. My mother is still fabulous. That’s a gift that they have given me. I hope I relay that to my kids. You hope that’s the overriding purpose in life – to just stay awake and awake and awake. And when its time to sleep you’re done.

GLT: Your song, ‘Power of Ribbons,’ holds special meaning to you; why is that?

MM: “Power of Ribbons” was written by Nancy Colton, who is the daughter of a very dear friend of mine. She lived fighting the battle of breast cancer for many years until she succumbed this last March. She sent a letter thanking all of her supporters several years ago when she did her first Revlon Walk. And I kept the letter on my piano for several months. I liked to look at and read the letter to remember those times when I knew her. I liked what it was and what she said. One day, as I was looking at the letter sitting down at the piano, I started to notice that the words were starting to swirl around and other words were starting to show up. And other words were starting to show up coming from behind the words. Whenever that happens to me, I know that a song is being born. I just sat there, and I just played with words until that lovely phrase power of ribbons came to me. I loved the image. You know those little pink satin ribbons mean nothing if you take it apart it’s just a safety pin and a ribbon. Susan G. Komen and the millions of people who have invested time and money into breast cancer research have galvanized over the years. The power of the symbol is unmistakable. It was lovely to have the song and go into the studio and have it on the Web site. Now it is played at almost every Revlon Run/Walk. You can download it on Amazon or iTunes or simply do a search for breast cancer research and find it. I’ve contributed all of my royalties to breast cancer research; it’s a good thing.

GLT: You have a large gay following; why do you think that is?

MM: I hope its because I started out in the ’70s, soon after Stonewall and at the beginning of gay rights and the beginning of the Women’s Movement and at the beginning of movements for the people who were just starting to feel empowered and were coming out of the shadows and connecting with the fact that I hope most of the songs I’ve written or recorded have been about: personal affirmation – the difference between being alone and being lonely. I hope that these messages have endured. It’s fascinating to see what’s happened in the Gay and Lesbian Movement in the last decade. How mindsets have changed, how civil rights have applied to relationships between gays and lesbians. It’s just fantastic. To see dear friends, gay and lesbian couples, who have children at this point they’re sort of at the pioneering fringe. But my lesbian friend’s children are becoming teenagers. It was a big deal for about 10 minutes and now everybody goes through the same crap that everyone goes through in life. It’s lovely to see families show up in all different ways and that the pervasive issue is how wanted and loved the children feel. That’s all I’m interested in.

GLT: Your songs have a theme of being alone and love and friendship. How do you define love?

MM: It’s too bad that friendship is a thin sounding word. I’m sure that in other languages there are 43 words for friendship. But in English that’s it. We have “pal” or “friend.” It’s the endurance of friendship, romantic love; there are millions of songs about falling in love, but there are few songs about staying in love and how you build on love and that it means so many things. The endurance of a friendship carries you through when love changes its form. When you’re beyond just falling in love and into the day to day of how a relationship works. If you have children, how that impacts a primary relationship or what happens when the kids move out. The other thing I notice, for me anyway, is that, more and more, the value of a song to convey these ideas becomes more precious. Songs are so powerful. You create this world that did not exist. In three or four minutes, you may have clarified something – always for yourself, but in unexpected ways for the listener. I have yet to get over that gift. That I start off with a blank piece of paper, but what I get back from listeners is so unexpected and so precious you can’t take that gift for granted. And the way you convey with the deepest part of your heart helps to clarify something for somebody you may never meet. In a world of song. It can’t be conveyed in any other way. It may be conveyed in a poem or song by the uniqueness of words, finding a melody or melody being married to the perfect word. It’s just extraordinary.

GLT: It must be rewarding.

MM: It is, because you think ‘Oh well, what’s the big deal.’ But maybe it is to me.

GLT: Speaking of changing worlds, if you could stand anywhere in the world and sing a song where would it be?

MM: I haven’t been many places. I just haven’t. I’ve crisscrossed this world and the United States a lot. But I had a really good moment that is actually true, when a friend of mine took me up in a hot air balloon for my birthday. I had my boom box with me. When we were up in the hot air balloon I turned the boom box on after they turned up the helium. It was absolutely silent and the sun was coming up, and I very quietly played Earth Wind and Fire’s “That’s the Way of the World.” That was so peaceful and rewarding. I think that may be where I’d like to sing to the world from.

GLT: You recently collaborated with Geoffrey Silver. How was that?

MM: He’s great. He’s a great storyteller and a lovely guy. We had a really good time singing the song. It goes over really well in performances, and it’s a lot of fun to perform.

GLT: Will we be hearing the work you collaborated with him on?

Of course. You’re going to be hearing some songs from when I went down that road to make that CD and much more. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to being in San Diego and seeing you there!