Lock and Ring - Barbershop Singing in Australia Locationless, Locationless, Locationless
By
ziggiau on 14-Dec-16. Waypoint GA8941
Cache Details
| Difficulty: | |
| Terrain: | |
| Type: | Locationless |
| Container: | Other |
| Proximity: | 161m |
Description
Head towards the music
Barbershop singing is a unique style of a capella harmony singing that originated in America but has spread all over the world. No longer the domain of four men with big moustaches and hats, barbershop music is sung by young and old, women and men. Don't expect the 1920s stereotype, barbershop his evolved a lot since then.
In Australia, barbershop is represented by two main organisations, Barbershop Harmony Australia and Sweet Adelines Australia, both local branches of worldwide organisations. Between them there are thousands of people who rehearse and perform music together all across Australia. As barbershop harmony relies on 4 parts (Tenor, Lead, Baritone and Bass) working together to produce a "lock and ring", you'll find performers in quartets (4 people), small ensembles, or larger groups known as chrouses. Groups regularily perform during the Christmas season, at citizenship ceremonies, and at Convention (one each for the guys and the girls), the main annual gathering of barbershoppers. You might also find groups singing in caves or on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge so keep your ears peeled.
To log this cache you will need to:
- find a barbershop quartet or chorus performing (rehearsals are permitted too, but only one log per performance)
- take a photo of that performance (of course don't interupt, a selfie with the group post-performance is fine too)
- NAME THE PERFORMERS - all quartets and choruses have names, make sure identify the group. If you're luck enough to come across international performers, that's permitted too.
- include the coords of where you saw the performance
- a review of what you heard
To help you get started in finding a group performing near you, visit the Sweet Adelines list of choruses by state and list of quartets, OR the Barbershop Harmony Australia chorus list and quartet list. You'll find that there are even more quartets than are listed as some of them pop into existance for a brief moment and are then gone again. And of course use all the regular search tools too (lots of activity on Facebook), or you may just get lucky and be in the right place at the right time.
Please be sure to NAME THE PERFORMERS you've seen so I can confirm that they were indeed barbershoppers and not other types of a capella singers (we love them too, but for the purposes of this cache it's barbershop only). If you're not sure it's barbershop, go and have a chat with the group after the performance, they would love to have a chat.
The best bit of this cache is that you get to enjoy the tight harmonies and outstanding performances of the singers.
Logs
We have a friend who is a part of the Endeavour Harmony Chorus.
A few weeks ago, we were telling the CO that we couldn't do something because we already had plans to see a performance of this Chorus.
The CO told us that she was once a member of the Chorus and had this locationless cache about Barbershop Singing and that if we were lucky, we could get a GA FTF.
During our afternoon performance, we got to see 2 Barbershop Quartet presentations and of course the Sweet Adelines.
Cool Change Quartet performed Tru Colours and for their second song the Baratone was the lead, sounded great. Cineman Quartet performed Beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
The Endeavour Harmony Chorus was great and being a Christmas presentation sang a lot of Carols. Their performance included:
Santa Clause is comming to town, Silver bells, Hark the Herald Angels sing, Carol of the Bells, Silent night, Somebody to love and the big one of the afternoon was hallelujah.
I need to check with the CO and if it's allowed, We saw another Quartet in Zimbabwe when we were there in November and if it is OK will also log that one.
