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Barbershop chorus has room for new members
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BY KIM BAER
Ivan Halfond loves Culpeper County. He loves his county's history, scenery and strong fine-arts programs. Only one thing was missing, he thought: a barbershop chorus. Halfond, who has sung barbershop for 12 years, decided to change that. He started the Culpeper Barbershop Harmony Chorus this summer. Halfond brought in the assistant director of the Fairfax Jubil-Aires to direct the Culpeper chorus. He has set up a Web site, harmonize .com/culpeper, put up fliers around town and contacted church choirs and other singing groups. He's looking for male singers--there are female barbershop choruses, but none in the Fredericksburg area--to join the chorus. The Culpeper chorus is the region's first new barbershop group in more than 40 years. The Historyland Barbershop Chorus, which meets in Fredericksburg, has been around since 1963. NEWBIES WELCOME The Culpeper chorus isn't seeking only seasoned barbershop singers. There are no auditions. Barbershop singers don't have to know how to read music. Many barbershop singers are recruited from church choirs, but that background isn't required. "You don't have to have previous experience," Halfond said. "We can help people learn how to sing." Barbershop harmony is "four-part, unaccompanied, close-harmony singing, with melody in the second voice, called the lead," according to a fact sheet on the Barbershop Harmony Society's Web site at barbershop.org. The other three parts are tenor, bass and baritone. Tenor "harmonizes above the lead singer, bass sings the lowest harmonizing notes and the baritone provides in-between notes to form consonant, pleasing sounds," the site explains. Barbershop lyrics focus on "simple, heartfelt emotions," with melodies written for the average singer. OFF TO A GOOD START Several men attended the chorus's first official practice earlier this month. Most had performed in other barbershop groups, but there were a couple of newcomers. Jimmy Brown has a deep bass voice and loves to sing, but had never sung barbershop. He comes from a family of bluegrass musicians. His wife plays guitar and mandolin and his son has a bluegrass band. But Brown's deep voice doesn't really fit in with their music. His wife saw an advertisement for the chorus in a newspaper and told him he needed to go learn to sing, he said with a smile. "I have no idea what I'm getting myself into," he said. Tom Sigmon of Culpeper was a professional wedding singer years ago.
Read more stories about Culpeper Date published: 9/26/2008
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