Veep

Meet the new Membership Vice President of the Maine-ly Music Chorus. Yup, I took the plunge and became an officer of the board for the district chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society. I had been doing some work this spring to encourage high school students and their teachers to take a closer look at barbershop singing and the rest of the board thought I’d be a good sucker—er, candidate—to be Membership VP.

Most Monday evenings (since last September) you can find me at 647 Main Street, Bangor, at the Parks and Rec Department, singing in the barbershop chorus and generally making a nuisance of myself. I’ve been blessed to be in the Maine-ly Music Chorus. It is a group of men that loves to sing and likes to have a good time doing it. There are some salty characters in the group, as well as the more mild-flavored ones. A timely wisecrack is usually appreciated, but so is paying attention and rehearsing well.

With all else going on in my life—growing family, changing careers—the Maine-ly Music Chorus is a good place to be:

• I get to sing in a chorus again, which I haven’t done since college. The music offers enough of a challenge—quite a bit considering we practice as a chorus just two hours a week and also because we are expected to be performing with some degree of physical involvement beyond singing with good facial expression—that it is in no way boring. (How’s my hyphen-and-dash-typing-practice going, by the way?)

• It’s a new genre of music in my singing experience. I grew up in a family of singers and was exposed to a lot of variety in music, but I was a bit too young to know what I was hearing and singing much of the time. I still love church music—the hymns and sacred classical pieces—and still sing in the church choir, but this barbershop singing experience brings something new. (Mum was always singing one thing or another, and it wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized that she loved musicals, and almost certainly had seen all of Julie Andrews’ musicals. I had known for a long time that The Sound of Music was one of—if not her number one—favorite movies, but the more I saw of various musicals, thanks to the influence of my dear wife, the more I recognized the music that Mum had sung to me when I was a boy. As I sit here just now Do Re Mi, If You Know the Notes to Sing and Just a Spoonful of Sugar pop into my memory—if those really are the titles or not, that’s what I remember!— as commonly heard tunes.)

• I was blessed, also, to have a professor in college that sang in a barbershop quartet. One spring evening during my final year of college, Dr. Graham gave me a ticket to a barbershop show in downtown Chattanooga. As often happens, I had not realized that one of my professors could have such an interesting hobby (teachers aren’t real people, are they?). I enjoyed the show, but did not envision at that time that I would be singing the same kind of music in a chorus some eighteen years later!

• Acceptance is an overused word, but it fits. I have been accepted into this group, and I have recently realized that I am more at ease around the men in this group than I have been anywhere else for many years.

• It provides an outlet for me that my kids enjoy, too. It is fun to have them come to a sing out or to a show. They learn the songs with me in the car and can often sing my part as well as I can, if not better. I hope that they will sing barbershop someday, too.

• This is a hobby I share with Dad. He’s been in the Maine-ly Music Chorus for five years now, and while Dr. Graham introduced me to barbershop music, Dad convinced me to try it out for myself. Dad is a bass and I am a bari. Several of the other men in the chorus have spoken fondly of having shared this hobby with their dads.

I am looking forward to working with other, more experienced members of the chorus to recruit new members, more youthful ones. As it is, of the current paid membership holders of the chorus I am the youngest, though there is a young man in his early twenties that comes regularly. We need an infusion of youth in our chapter to help it thrive and not just survive. I go and sing because I like the music, I like to sing in a group and I enjoy the camaraderie found there. I hope to find young men (and young women for the local women’s chorus) that are looking for a similar experience and have them join us!