Special Report On The Barbershop Society's International Convention in Nashville

by Ed Rittenhouse, Vice President for Music
The last four International Barbershop Harmony Conventions have seen new trends in both the Chorus Competition and the Quartet Competition. I am ambivalent about these two new trends, but they are probably here to stay, at least for a while.

Last year in Denver the chorus champions, the Westminster Chorus from Westminster, California introduced along with their wonderful singing, an athletic choreography that included dancing , backflips, and tumbling. It won the International Championship! Of course they had the advantage that every member of the chorus was under 35 years of age.

This year the two top choruses, The Ambassadors of Harmony from Missouri and the Masters of Harmony from California decided that they had to introduce athleticism into their routines, too. The Masters edged the Ambassadors for first place by just seven points out of a possible 3000 and the rest of the competitors were far behind. Is this where we're going in future competitions? Can you imagine our chorus doing this, singing, dancing, and tumbling simultaneously? Of course, their chorus members are not all under 35 years old, but the men in the front rows that do most of the dancing are.

Three of the arrangements that our chorus sings were prominent in the competition. The Capital City Chorus of Ottawa, Ontario sang "When There's Love At Home", the Heart of America Chorus from Kansas City, Missouri sang "You Make Me Feel So Young" (also two of the quartets) and "Bye Bye Blues" (our arrangement!) was sung 50 years ago by the quartet that won the Quartet Championship that year, the Gay Notes.

The new trend in the Quartet Competition is to put together a quartet containing either past gold medal winners or members of top ten quartets. For example, last year's first place quartet, "Max Q", had Jeff Oxley from Acoustix singing bass and Tony DeRosa from Platinum singing lead. Also, finishing sixth a year ago was a new quartet named "Glory Days" that had Riptide's Tim Reynolds at lead and two more guys from Acoustix, Rick Middaugh at baritone and Joel Rutherford at bass, and they finished in sixth place out of 49 quartets.

This year, two new quartets containing past winners appeared. "Old School" had Joe Connelly (three time gold medal winner) at lead and Rick Taylor of BSQ at tenor. My favorite new quartet "Crossroads" had the Gas House Gang's Jim Henry at bass, Brandon Guyton of Four Voices at baritone, and Michael Slamka of Power Play at lead, all gold medal winners! They finished in second place out of 51 quartets while Old School finished fifth.

Quartet OC Times

There are top quartets that don't have previous gold medal winners in them such as this year's champs "OC Times", and the third and fourth place finishers "State Line Grocery" and "Redline", but the success of these "medal-winner" quartets seems to assure that the trend will continue. I am amazed that four experienced guys who live in different corners of the country can pick new musical arrangements and new interpretations, learn the music separately, practice a few times together, and be good enough to make the Top Ten out of 50 quartets at their first competition.

The Gospel Sing held at the First Baptist Church a block down the street from our new Headquarters was really inspiring this year. Joe Liles had just finished a brand new barbershop arrangement of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" and the 800 of us who sang found it amazing. Much like our "It Is Well With My Soul", it was beautifully harmonic and yet easy to learn. Those are the best kind of arrangements, and can you imagine what it sounds like with 800 singers? The other song we sang was a Mo Rector arrangement that is a standard part of the repertoire of my quartet One A Chord, "Just Over In The Gloryland". It was fun singing it with a church full of people. The guest quartet at the Gospel Sing, The Kings Heralds, is known all over the South. Each of the four guys is a soloist in his own right and their music sends chills up your spine if you are a gospel enthusiast. I bought their latest CD if any of you would like to hear it.

Collegate Quartet

The Mid Atlantic District was well represented in the Collegiate Contest again with our quartet "Crunch Time" finishing fifth out of 23 quartets. If you've been keeping up with the MAD quartets, two of the guys will be well known to you. Eric Wallen is the bass from Last Kids Picked and Shawn Thomas, the lead, was the lead with New Release who finished second in the Collegiate Contest in 2006. Of course, we won the International Collegiate Championship in 2007 with Road Trip.

For all of you who have never been to one of these International Conventions or who have not attended recently, next year the convention will be in Anaheim, California but the following year it will be back east again in Philadelphia. I hope we can get a bunch of us together and attend the 2010 ten convention in Philadelphia.

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