Well it is hard to believe the Hobart Festival is done and dusted. What a great time we all had and, for those who followed up the Festival  with the fantastic Harmony Academy afterwards, you were treated to a unique and wonderful learning experience.

The Hobart Festival chalked up a number of firsts, not the least of which is the name change from Convention to Festival. This immediately creating a much more inclusive environment for people from outside of our Barbershop fraternity to join in and see what we are all about.

The Pub Chorus, City Pop-ups, the "Everyone Singing in Harmony" Workshop and the free Public Concert were all new initiatives proving to be outstanding successes.

The various competitions were very well supported with an extremely high standard throughout. If you haven't already done so, you can check out all the individual scores on the BHA website or directly through this link  

The feature quartet Signature were breathtaking and rarely have we seen this level of dynamic performance brought to the Barbershop stage. 

The overall organisation and venue were superb and full marks must go to the Tasmanian organising team and the National Council for putting together such a well organised and enjoyable event.

The next BHA National event will be held at the Pan Pac 2020 in Auckland with further details about this upcoming event elsewhere in this Newsletter.

Dick Bushell - Editor   

Hello members

Photo Galleries from the Festival are now available.
They will be active until 1st November 2019.

The images are organised into separate galleries for each day - Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

To obtain the images you want, search through the thumbnails and click the Download button.

There is no cost for images. You may download as many as you wish.

Link to gallery page: http://www.industryphotographer.com.au/photogallery/ BHA 19-9-2019 BHA 20-9-2019 BHA 21-9-2019

The galleries are password protected.
(Members please refer to my email to all BHA members dated 27 September 2019 for details of the required password)

Happy Hunting


Trevor Rootes
Secretary
Barbershop Harmony Australia
secretary@barbershop.org.au
www.barbershop.org.au

Early details have now been released of the next Pan Pacific Convention to be held in Auckland in 2020. As with some previous Pan Pac's, this Convention will also coincide with the next BHA National Convention on the same dates and in the same venue although this will be the first time a BHA National Convention has been held outside Australia. 

Name of Convention: The convention will be known as “Pan Pac 2020”.

Venue: The contests will be held at the Victory Convention Centre, not far from the CBD, hotels and the waterfront entertainment area. You can see more detail at www.victoryconventioncentre.co.nz .

Dates: The first activities will occur on the morning of Thursday 10 September 2020 and the last activity will be the Farewell Lunch on Sunday 13 September 2020.

An Unusual Feature: This will be the first “Everyone in Harmony” Pan Pac, with contests for Men’s Quartets, Men’s Choruses, Ladies Quartets, Ladies Choruses, Mixed Quartets and Mixed Choruses.

Other activities: The New Zealand Young Singers in Harmony (YSIH) annual convention will take place at the same venue on Tue 8 and Wed 9 September. This will include secondary school choruses from all over New Zealand, both boys’ choruses and girls’ choruses. While this is an associated barbershop activity, with amazing performances expected and a special show on the Wednesday evening, it is not part of Pan Pac 2020.

Headline Quartet: The Headline Quartet will be “Main Street” who come with a reputation of being great entertainers and we are privileged to have them join us.

Watch out for the first Pan Pac 2020 Newsletter in the near future

 

Signature Youth Workshop

I’d like to start by thanking the Hobart Convention Committee for all their hard work in getting so many local students involved in the BHA youth workshop on the Friday of the Festival. The Hobart Convention Committee has made an impact by visiting schools regularly to provide resources, opportunities for performance, and coaching to the schools, which will help foster a longer term commitment to Barbershop in these schools. The students all had an excellent time working with Signature and learned a lot from the experience. I’d also like to thank the members of the Baden Street Singers and Sound Connection for joining the school students on stage and supporting them with your wonderful voices.

Last week, BHA had a presentation slot at this years Australian Society for Music Education conference, with the aim to expose many teachers to the benefits of having Barbershop as part of a music curriculum. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to attend to give this presentation, but fortunately for BHA, one of our Music Category judges, and most successful directors, Nick Schurmann was able to step in with only a few days notice to deliver an engaging and exciting presentation. Those in attendance were also lucky enough to get a performance from the current mixed chorus champions, the Baden Street Singers, to get them excited about what Barbershop can be at its’ highest level!

Looking to the future, I will be working closely with the 2021 convention committee to make the youth event in the gold coast the biggest and most successful one BHA has ever had.

Yours in Harmony,

Kieran O’Dea

Vice President, Youth Development.

We all know the health benefits and camaraderie that comes from singing together as part of this wonderful Barbershop family and we are determined to share that message with the Australian community.

Similarly, as a group of members spanning Australia we have sought to find an opportunity to collaborate in a nation-wide project focussed on improving outcomes for others.

So this year we have reached out to the Movember Foundation to join with them in promoting Men’s Health and promoting within BHA an initiative to participate in Movember 2019 (with a special shout out to Vox Canvas who last year provided the inspiration for this initiative).

Imagine this. If 60 percent of the members of all of our clubs across Australia joined in to raise an average of $25 per member we could raise over $12,000 whilst sharing the joy of Barbershop.    It is fully inclusive for any member, from the classic “Mo growing” experience, to Movement challenges, through to simply fundraising with other members of the Movember community. We can share stories, photos, fun and friendship whilst engaging in community events and sharing our love of Barbershop.

The BHA national council will arrange for Movember to set up a “Challenge” for Barbershop Harmony Australia.   A Challenge is an umbrella page on the Movember website for our organisation that enables us to keep track of how our fundraising is tracking as a whole.

Before we can get this set up, the first step is for all participants to head to Movember.com and Sign Up for a Fundraising (Mo Space) page as individuals. This is an easy process and takes only ten minutes.   After signing up, one person from each Team will create the Team fundraising page – this person will become the Team Captain.   

When we give the word, Movember will then establish a “Barbershop Harmony Australia Challenge” page, which all barbershop teams will join.   This will allow us to keep track of our network’s fundraising total, post pictures and messages, and see leader boards for each Team.. 

To get us started I have attached Movembers Core Fundraising Guide which will give you an overview of what Movember is all about and also has some great fundraising ideas in there. 

We trust that you will fully consider the opportunities to engage with your fellow Barbershoppers across Australia and within our communities in this collaborative and outwards reaching initiative.

Please contact me if you have any questions or need assistance.

Yours In Harmony,

• President
• Treasurer
• Vice President Marketing and Development
• Vice President Events

Do you have photos and/ or videos of barbershop in Australia from across the years?

I have begun teaching a class at Harmony Academy each year on the history of BHA. I already have a bunch of material such as all scores, some historic photos and videos, etc, but I want much more to be able to include in my class and hopefully a stand-alone video on the history of BHA that I will put together. Specifically what I’m looking for are photos and videos of

• Convention – especially early years– groups photos of the welcome dinner, mass sing, full audience during competition, any group photos that were taken, such as a Harmony College

• Medallist quartets and choruses

• Launching of clubs/ inaugural events (like first rehearsal)

• Trips/ concerts/ coaching visits etc – things that show a specific event in the history of your club, and therefore BHA

If you have any of these, please contact me at richard@reeve.com.au or 0411 519 851

Also, if you can digitise videos, please get in touch. We have a large number of videos (at least hundreds of hours) that are going to be lost forever when the physical videos deteriorate.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Richard Reeve, BHA National Education Faculty

Hobart BHA Convention
What a wonderful occasion was the 2019 BHA Australia Convention held at Wrestpoint Casino Hobart, Tasmania. Wrestpoint Casino is the perfect venue for such a get-together as it has large, modern, versatile entertainment areas as well as a variety of smaller function rooms.  The casino has a number of eating areas to suit differing tastes and needs, as well as multiple bars on-site. This made for a very pleasant stay for a big gathering of barber-shoppers!

Newcastle’s Novatones chorus and quartets had a great time in Hobart-spending time listening to some marvellous harmony, as well as performing and joining in with lots of groups and individuals, who all love to sing in the barbershop style. We enjoyed catching up with long-time friends, as well as meeting and singing with, other like-minded people from around Australia. The quality of singing was high during all the events. This included serious competition, semi-serious entertainment, quality-learning activities, as well as more relaxed times in multiple locations around the main venue and at other places around the beautiful city of Hobart. BHA provided an excellent Judging panel who also doubled as coaches to assist with taking barbershop choruses and quartets to a higher level.
 

Novatones performing their competition set

Beryllium on stage

Fortune Hunters got plenty of laughs with their comedy set

Due to some good local promotion, a large number of locals turned up excitedly to learn and sing a popular song, in the barbershop style. We witnessed some top-line barbershop harmony, from not only Signature, the phenomenal champion quartet from the US, but also from quartets and choruses from around Australia. Audiences could not help but be impressed, with the variety of performances that exuded beautiful harmony, deep emotion, and a good spattering of humour.  For me, that tinge of humour started right from the onset, when my wife and I were booking in- the reception clerk asked me if I was part of that large ‘hair-dressing group’ that was visiting! 

We are all looking forward to Auckland!

Mark Henley Novatones Bari and reporter

Members of the Festival Statesmen have just returned from the Hobart Festival and would like to thank all those involved with putting on such an awesome week.  We congratulate all of the competitors and in particular Sound Connection, The Baden Street Singers and The Collective for their beautiful and inspiring performances throughout the week.  We know that you will be wonderful BHA ambassadors for the coming year.

We would also like to congratulate all of the Festival Statesmen associated groups including, Nick Nack Paddy Catt for winning Youth Gold and Rehash for their Bronze Medal placing 5th.  Also congratulations must go to Poster Boys and Covering All Basses for finishing in the Top Ten Quartets.   We also acknowledge members Cam Du'Rieu and Ben Neldner for their work with Adelaide Vocal Union taking home the Small Chorus Trophy, congratulation to all.

It was an honour for the Festival Statesmen to sing several times throughout the Festival as your outgoing 2018 Gold Medallists. Thank you for having us!

We now look forward to our next concert which is the Central Region Benefit Concert which is being put on by the Central Region to aid in our fundraising efforts for our trip to Los Angeles next year.  The show will be on October 27, head to our website for more details! We then look forward to a joint Christmas Concert with High Spirits Harmony on Saturday 14th of December. Hope to see you there!

Anthony Little
Vice President Festival Statesmen

Sunday August 11^th saw the first full rehearsal of the Melbournaires newest chorus, the Barbershop Mixed Ensemble Victoria under the direction of Traci Voss, MD of the Melbourne Chorus. At the time of writing there are approximately 17 men and 13 women in the chorus, and after being “whipped into shape” by voice parts, riser positions etc, the group is producing a lovely sound that you don’t hear in single gender choruses.

The BarME Vics is a temporary title but the initial aim is to compete in the 2020 BHA Vic Regional competition.

The ladies in the group come from the Melbourne Chorus, Vocal Vibes, East City Sound, and Southern Sounds which are the Sweet Adelines choruses in the metropolitan area.

The Melbournaires are proud to be involved in the development of a new dimension in Barbershop singing.
 
The Hobart Convention kicked off on the Tuesday with what became a highlight for many. The wonderful Alex Morris, together with the WA quartet Electric Barbercats, led a very large group of singers in learning a new version of the classic 1984 Hunters and Collectors song “Throw your Arms Around Me”. This song has had many iterations and covers, but never one like this. The result was a night-time spot on the local ABC TV.
 
With regard to the Melbournaires Harmony Chorus, four quartets performed, namely Sound Investment 65.7%, Boardwalk 64.6%, Around The Blend 68%, and looking resplendent in green ties and waistcoats, Fourtet scored a creditable 61.8% for a new and still evolving four.
Boardwalk was awarded a silver medal in the Seniors section, and mixed quartet Around the Blend won a bronze.


The Melbournaires Chorus scored 67.4% reflecting the time and effort, skills and patience of MD Ian Lushey, in maintaining this level of commitment. The objective and ultimate challenge is to consistently break the 70% mark, and if the chorus, with many new members, maintains its enthusiasm and desire for learning, undoubtedly progress will be forthcoming.
 
The convention, including the exquisite scenery surrounding Hobart, was enjoyed by all and contained many highlights. Our thanks to the BHA Convention Committee and especially the Hobart team responsible for the on-the-ground organizing. A warm welcome from a well-prepared convention.

Terry Phillips

Following the publication of the last newsletter (our first contribution for several years) we received a letter from George Walker, a member in the early years.  George appreciated the brief history update and happily recognised several members in the accompanying photograph; sixteen current members share his history of those times.  

In particular he was happy to see that Doris Ward is still active in the chorus.  Doris founded the chorus in 1989 and was our founding MD.  She has been our vocal coach for some years and is currently our Acting MD.  Our long time MD, Dr Brian Johnson, is currently recovering from surgery.  

George also commended our sing-outs in Retirement Villages and Nursing Homes in support of our chosen charity, the Oncology Unit at the Children's Hospital at Westmead and our desire to be a force for good in our local community. 

SSEHC at CCA Concert with Acting MD Doris Ward standing to the left

What is it about that Barbershop Chord? 
The chorus has just participated in a gala concert in support of Christian Community Aid, Eastwood, our chosen songs being: “Can You Feel The Love Tonight" (Lion King); “Hallelujah” (Cohen); “What A Wonderful World" (Armstrong).  From the first tune-up chord the audience was captivated. 








What is it that makes a performance become something more than the sum of its parts and our individual pursuits in this activity more than just a hobby?  Is it the fullness or expansion of sound, the understandable diction and speech-like singing, the natural unmanufactured delivery free of apparent effort rooted in a complete mastery of breath control?  This art or craft, these skills we pursue as amateur barbershoppers, was met with rapturous applause and we were greeted like celebrities when mingling at interval and again at the conclusion of the concert.   

When asked for a post mortem at our following rehearsal, Doris commented on the enthusiastic applause and our beautiful singing.

Yours in harmony,
  
Lionel Eastwood 
Events Coordinator 
SydneySiders Express Harmony Chorus  
www.sydneysiders.org  

Hills Harmony wins the Andy Arbele Trophy for the Senior Chorus in the National Barbershop Competition. 

Great headlines, We have done it again and are delighted to do so.  We can continue to promote our chorus as “The Good Ol’ Guys” and have a trophy to prove it.


We now have back to back wins, like the NRL Roosters. Let us tell you these old roosters from North West  Sydney are “cock a hoot” about retaining the Andy Arberle Trophy.  The bottom line is we are singing well, very competently and competitively and enjoying ourselves at the same time.  Our “purpose built” competition song, “When I’m 84”, a parody of The Beatles “When I’m 64” fostered big smiles, laughter, mirth and some rolled eyes from the audience. Just as we planned, happiness  all round. We would like to thank Andy and the BHA for implementing the “Senior Chorus” It has given us another reason to keep singing.

Speaking of Good O’l guys. After one of the several occasions we have been busking at local shopping centres, a passing spectator, obviously from a much younger generation, posted a comment and photo on our facebook page. “Why I love living in Australia. Geriatric flash mob”.  We are a little indecisive about our feelings toward being referred to as geriatric, but the comment was a positive one.  It is becoming harder to hide the fact we are getting older but we were recognised as a “Flash” mob and our singing made a young lady happy she was living in Australia.  Great fun.

Our concert last Saturday for the residents of Rowland Village, a local RSL retirement centre was a return gig. Feedback has been very positive.  They loved our variety, including Peter Donald’s family quartet Accelerando and his virtuoso work on the violin, the fact that they could sing along with the songs, (they were christened “age appropriate”) , move in time, connect with some pleasant memories and that our performance left them “awake and smiling”.  All were part of the very pleasant and worthwhile afternoon.

Paul Meller

The Miner Chords are really pleased and proud to announce that they have a new MD – Glen Hart.

Our previous MD, Gordon Dryden has been on holiday and has also attended to some health maintenance.  He’s also said he’ll take most of next year off, hence our new MD.  The Miners are very grateful to Gordon for keeping us together and keeping us singing.  He’s going to join us again, occasionally, as an ordinary member and we look forward to having him in the Leads.

Speaking of sections, we really need a tenor or two, so if you know someone in Ipswich who could sing tenor with us, we’ll send you a virtual bottle of champagne to make it worth your while to send them along.

We are rehearsing now for several Christmas performances in November and December which means brushing up on songs for old members and learning new ones for the ‘new’ members.  We are also navigating our way through the challenges posed for women’s voices singing songs designed for men’s voices.

We recently sang at a Men’s Group.  We shared their evening meal and in return sang with them, then performed for them, and then got them to sing with us.  It really was fun – a bit of barbershop and a bit of free range singing, we even sang a hymn as a round!

Again, welcome to Glen – we’re looking forward to working with you.

Sound Connection and our sister organisation, Vocalescence, performed to a packed auditorium for both an afternoon and an evening show on the 24^th of August.  Sound Connection sang songs from our 60’s repertoire including Can’t Help Falling in Love, Happy Together, Aquarius, King of the Road and Sloop John B. 
On the 3^rd of October, the Gold Coast Bulletin published a very complimentary article about our recent gold-medal win in Hobart.  We were extremely proud of the fact that this was the first gold medal for 6 of our 22 members (a little over 25%) and for 5 members, this was their first contest performance.  One of our members, Charlie Voges, now has 11 gold chorus medals and 1 quartet gold medal.

To take advantage of the free publicity from the article, we will be holding an Open Night on the 14^th of October to attract new members before the busy Christmas season. 

Sound Connection will be performing at several Christmas Carol events this year, including the premiere event, Carols on the Beach in Surfer’s Paradise on the 22^nd of December.
 
Jerry Sadlowski
Vice-President
Sound Connection

Greetings from High Altitude Harmony which has returned home safely from a wonderful BHA Convention in Hobart. We’d like to congratulate the organisers of this great event and we’ve come away inspired by the quality of the quartets and choruses we were privileged to witness. HAH is especially proud of Fifth Gear and Good 4 U who represented us on the contest stage, and we especially congratulate ‘our’ 2019 Seniors Quartet Champions ESCAPADE on their win. 

Since the last edition of the BHA Harmony Newsletter we’ve continued our coaching work with Kelly Shepherd and have delivered two fantastic public concerts as well as a performance at Toowoomba Rep Theatre in support of the Internationally renowned Carnival of Flowers. 

We’re in great voice right now and have a steady stream of community gigs to keep us occupied. Our new learn and revision Christmas repertoire is now in fully swing and we’re looking forward to our break up at the Downs Steam Railway Station on December 7. We’ll also revive our Australiana repertoire in the hope we jag an Australia Day gig next year.

Singcerely
HAH Executive

After enjoying the National convention, the pleasures of Hobart and the delights of Tasmania the Brisbane River City Clippers arrived home to find strange omens and messages from an alien source. We knew our annual show would be out of this world (it always is) but the messages presaged something even more than this.

Voyager One, launched into deepest space in 1977, carries a golden CD of music. To our delight, faint messages coming back to our super sensitive telepathic receptors (a.k.a. music director, Nick Ellis and music team) alerted us to a mysterious vibe. Something, or someone, was trying to connect with the music. So our show is going to explain and demonstrate the deeper meaning of music for any intelligent creature who may drop in.


This will be a close encounter of musical kind. There is a lot to think of: How do explain human emotions to an alien? What about falling in love, having children and other human stories? Fortunately, Barbershop has lots of material to help us with this.

The guys will not be doing it all alone. We are pleased to be joined by Blue Sky Harmony (director Julie Edwards) a Brisbane-based female barbershop chorus. They will bring life to the other side of Barbershop’s messages of harmony, friendship and human-other encounters. A chorus-based octet Just Ate will add some humour and parody to the mix.

The show will be on Sun, 27 Oct 2019 at the McElligott Theatre at 1.30 pm.
St Laurence's College, 82 Stephens  Road, South Brisbane. https://trybooking.com/BDXXQ
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/393693068223503/

Last month over half the chorus travelled down to wonderful Hobart for the National Convention and Harmony Festival events. The Barbershop Pub Choir was a great way to kick off with the John Little Show to follow up.

For the quartet competitions the Clippers premiere quartet, ‘Three Squirrels and a Nut’, were on the stage with the best and scored a personal best. Congratulations guys! The next day they were among the groups doing ‘pop-ups’ around town. Their performance in the wonderful acoustic of the Hadley hotel was a gem to remember.

The full Chorus came together for the Chorus Chorale. It was time to sing for the love of it and share the pleasure with a like-minded audience.

The chorus assembled for the next day’s chorus competition with high expectations. We were keen to build on the success we had achieved in Adelaide. We each felt we had sung well on the day but the judges were listening critically for the ensemble effect and our collective score was less than what we had hoped. The recordings of the performance, the evaluations and our own self-assessments are a valuable resource for building the collective sound we want. Auckland – here we come!

Congratulations to Sound Connection, our Gold Coast neighbours for winning the chorus competition this year. Nick Ellis, our director, sings with the group, so there was an extra reason to enjoy your success.



See you all in Auckland next year.

Malcolm Alexander

What a great time we had in Hobart! The 2019 Barbershop Harmony Festival was a resounding success for us in many ways. After taking a year off by choosing not to compete at the 2018 Adelaide Convention, it was a real thrill for the chorus to take to the contest stage at Wrest Point as the first competitor of the day and present our “Fool” package to such a welcoming audience. We are absolutely delighted with our 4^th Placing and extremely appreciative of the glowing feedback we received from so many of our fellow barbershoppers after our performance.  

In their national quartet contest debut, our guys The Steamed Hams performed exceptionally well, earning 11^th place in a highly competitive field and securing the coveted “mic test” spot for the Finals on Friday night. Well done Steamers! And congratulations to our Assistant Musical Director, Gareth Hearne, for his quartet Helix’s 7^th Place in the quartet Final.

We had quite a large contingent from the chorus attend Harmony Academy this year, including our MD Vicki Dwyer and key members of our Music Team, taking advantage of the excellent education on offer from the expert faculty. Our quartet Roaming grabbed the opportunity and enrolled in the Quartet stream, getting valuable one-on-one coaching from visiting International Quartet champs Signature among others. Great education and a good time was had by all!

Immediately following Harmony Academy, Signature quartet came and spent a few days as tourists in our beautiful city. Admittedly with very little notice but with the unique chance to present a performance opportunity featuring the current BHS International Quartet Champion, our team sprung into action and organised an impromptu concert for the Saturday night at Sydney Harmony’s rehearsal venue in North Sydney. About 130 of Sydney’s barbershop community turned out to hear a blistering set performed by Signature on their final night in Australia. Local groups Circular Keys Chorus, Vox Canvas, Alouette quartet, Bardic Post, Accelerando and Sydney Harmony warmed up the audience before the superlative Signature wowed the room with their undeniable talent.

The afterglow rolled on for hours with traditional barbershop camaraderie, copious refreshments and tags a plenty. It will be a night long remembered. Our heartfelt thanks extends to the guys of Signature for their friendship and unbound generosity in leaving their Sydney fans such a gift. Till next time!

Tony Sykes
VP MUSIC | SYDNEY HARMONY
 

The Steamed Hams - Hobart 2019

Signature - Sydney Afterglow

Sydney Harmony at Hobart

Signature at Taroonga Zoo

Signature in Sydney - Performance

Wollongong Men’s Barbershop Chorus is definitely growing in numbers. In the past twelve months we have had some fresh ideas coming our way from our new director Russell Bailey with some good social Media advertising we some new and fresh members!   Things are feeling good and we even have a new quartet formed which is performing publicly this month.    

Claudio Lodi
Publicity Officer