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