ISLAND CITY CHORUS

GREATER MONTREAL CHAPTER

Northeastern District

The Barbershop Harmony Society

The Little Chorus that could!

MINI PITCH

Date: August 2, 2004 Volume 2004 -Issue 31

The Expos and us, again.

The Island City Chorus once again sang the American and Canadian National Anthems before the start of the game on Tuesday, July 27, 2004. Your intrepid reporter was enjoying mussels and scallops for dinner in PEI, so missed the big game. The score was NY Mets 4 Montreal 2.

The Expo's management sent a nice letter to say thank you for our presence and participation. It is available for view on the web at: http://www.nedistrict.org/montreal/expos.htm

What O. C. Cash really said

In response to some of these special-interest claims, let me offer a few quotes from our founder, O. C. Cash, himself:

"The brothers at Macomb, Illinois, invited me to their recent parade and it was a dandy. The work of the chorus impressed me especially, and the nice thing about it was that in the 100 men comprising it, all ages were represented—high school boys and great-grandfathers—all singing close harmony for the sheer love of singing. What a wholesome influence on our way of life it will be when such groups are organized in every village, town and city in the land! ...

"Do you brothers realize that at the Milwaukee convention, we had four choruses in attendance? At our first convention in Tulsa we had only 10 or 12 quartets. At the Oklahoma City convention next year I hope we have that many choruses. I suggest we arrange to have these various choruses put on a 15-30 minute recital. We may have to allot an extra day to get this all on the program. It will not be many years until we will have to set aside an entire week, making it a ‘barbershop harmony festival,’ as well as a national convention and contest. ... "The parade at San Gabriel was a well-planned and extremely entertaining event. Of particular interest to me was the splendid performance of the chorus. I have not heard very many of the choruses throughout the country, and I must not indicate any preference, but the singing of this group thrilled me to my toes. ...

"Even though it is burlesqued, I am always impressed with this operatic stuff that some of the quartets indulge in occasionally. I heard a group on the air the other day sing "Beyond The Blue Horizon." It was strictly a glee-club arrangement, but it was so pretty, and I thought how much better my proposed chorus could have done the number. I like any kind of singing if done by Barbershoppers, and they are the guys that can do it. ...

"With interest and choruses continuing to develop, we should make provision for more activity of this kind at our annual conventions. So, begin thinking of an annual meeting of six or seven days duration to provide outlet for all phases of harmony singing. With a full week of harmony of various kinds, the devotee of any variety could come and go as he pleased. Of course, most of us would have to take in the whole ‘shootin’ match.’ ...

"We haven’t heard so much about the Texas brothers. They were a little late in getting started in barbershop activities, but you can rest assured that they have some fine quartets and some splendid choruses. While they are terribly good, those of you who know anything about Texas will understand they are not nearly so good as they say they are, in fact, they are only about as good as the rest of us. ...

"For a long time, I have had an idea that, while emphasis should be laid upon barbershop harmony and choruses, each group should have in its repertoire a few selections of a more-or-less classical nature. Have you heard Bob Ising’s Louisville gang sing the ‘Summertime’ thing? That’s not barbershop, but it simply ‘curls your hair.’ These numbers should be performed occasionally just to show the audience that barbershoppers ‘came up the hard way’; that is, they mastered these high-brow pieces and this type of music preliminary to graduating into barbershop choruses. I think we ought to give our audiences a taste of typical glee club, classical or operatic music just to show them that barbershoppers can sing anything, and sing it well. Too, it will help those men who have spent a lifetime singing this so-called ‘long-hair’ type music to realize that their time has not been entirely wasted. Applying themselves assiduously, they can still hope to progress upward and maybe get into one of our choruses and have some fun yet before they die."

We suffer from people who have a cause putting words in the mouths of others. We also suffer from misinformation and guesswork that finds its way onto the Internet!

Congratulations and thanks to Alan Mackenzie for putting out the MINI-PITCH for last week. I was delighted to see that he had sent it to the chorus, and now it is posted to the web and has been sent to the rest of our loyal readers.

Here is our current repertoire list: [mp3] means that the mp3 file is on the Members' Only web site

Practice is something we do at home, every day, between rehearsals!

Rehearsal is where we reinforce what we have been practising every day!