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ABOVE: Third Quarter quartet members Frank Jefferson, Brian Johnson, Tom Norin and Bert Johnson support their Culpeper peers.
Culpeper Barbershop Harmony Chorus members Reggie Reynolds, Frank Fedarko and Tom Sigmon are working hard to harmonize.
TOP: All things barbershop rule the post-practice gathering hosted by Culpeper Barbershop Harmony Chorus at Ledo Pizza.
Roanoke's Virginia Gentleman (Phil Merkel, Dave Whitney, Dick Smull and Tom Meier) group sings at the gathering.
Guests (from right) Roger Lemieux and Thom Faircloth enjoy one of the many performances during a night of practice and presentation of barbershop music hosted by the Culpeper Barbershop Harmony Chorus at Ledo Pizza and Pasta. |
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.
Sigmon never sang barbershop until he attended his first meeting of the Culpeper chorus.
"I thought it was a lost music art," he said.
Shaving the numbers
Halfond has a challenge ahead in recruiting more new singers such as Brown and Sigman.
Barbershop choruses nationwide struggle to keep and attract members.
The Barbershop Harmony Society has about 29,000 members in more than 800 chapters according to barber shop.org. That's about 10,000 less than the society's all-time high of 40,000 members in the '90s, said Chuck Harner of Vienna.
Harner is an official with the society, tasked with helping start new chapters in the state. He's currently working with three new groups, including Culpeper.
The society is taking other steps to boost its membership, he said. It is offering more and improved training for directors and chapter leaders and is reaching out to high school and college students through its Youth in Harmony program. Halfond hopes to start a youth chorus at Eastern View.
Halfond has already gotten the group off to a strong start.
He has lined up a gig at a Culpeper restaurant in December. John Knueven, Culpeper's director, is teaching the group two love songs for a Singing Valentines fund-raiser.
Knueven has served as organist and choir director for his church for 30 years and is an assistant director with the Fairfax Jubil-Aires. He recently earned his director's certification from the barbershop society.
At the group's first meeting, Knueven focused on basics such as the proper singing stance. He went through breathing exercises.
He asked the group to sing the line "listen to the whistle blowing, everything is fine," encouraging them to hold the "faa" sound on fine to make it ring.
"That rings like fire," he said with a smile when the group sang it correctly.
He told them one of his goals is to incorporate movement.
"Try not to be stone-faced," he told the group as they sang the line "I love playing in the traffic as the cars go racing by."
Use your hands to express the song, he told them. Think about what the words mean.
"Feel free, in fact feel compelled to tell the story to our audience," he said.
Excelling is 'difficult'
The image many have of barbershop is rooted in the musical "The Music Man," with well-dressed men decked out in straw boaters, breaking into impromptu takes on standards such as "Lida Rose."
Achieving that effortless-looking perfection takes practice. The newcomers (and even some old-timers) struggled with some of the lines Knueven gave them.
"It's one of those forms of music that is easy to do, but difficult to do really well," Halfond said.
But learning how to do it right is worth it, singers say.
Barbershop singers talk lovingly about "ringing" a chord--when all four parts are singing exactly as they're supposed to. The feeling, they say, is unforgettable.
"The music just expands," Halfond said. "When you have a chance to experience that, it just makes your hair stand on end."
Kim Baer: 540/368-5028
Email: kbaer@freelancestar.com
| WHAT: The Culpeper Barbershop Harmony Chorus WHEN: Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. WHERE: Eastern View High school, 16332 Cyclone Way, Culpeper NEED MORE INFO? Go to harmonize.com/culpeper or call Ivan Halfond at 703/851-6333. |
