Orlando is home to a thriving, storied, and award-winning barbershop chorus community. And three championship choruses are banding together to present “United Voices: A Barbershop Unity Project” this weekend.
Put the three groups together – the men’s Orlando Harmony, the women’s Sound of Sunshine Show Chorus, and the co-ed Orange Blossom Chorus – and you’ve got about 150 years of performing history.
Gayle Burton is Artistic Director of Sound of Sunshine Show Chorus.
“Barbershop is an American folk-art form,” explains Gayle Burton, Artistic Director of Sound of Sunshine Show Chorus, “and we want to make sure it stays alive.”
She says it’s a form of singing worth saving. “Once you do it, you’re addicted,” she laughs. “There’s nothing like creating the ring of a barbershop seventh chord. It just gets inside you and you want to keep doing it!”
Burton says she’s excited for the chance to introduce barbershop to a wider audience.
“This is something that’s for everybody,” she says. “We just want to share this art form and we just felt like putting the men and women together in a show, would just be a great way to showcase that and get that out to the public.”
Additionally, Burton points out that in her women’s chorus, it’s sometimes a family affair, with several mother-daughter sets of performers as well as a trio of singers made up of three generations in one family – mother, daughter, and granddaughter.
“It’s a legacy we want to share with Orlando, which is clearly a choral-music-loving community,” Burton says.
Matthew Boutwell is Assistant Artistic Director of Orange Blossom Chorus. He agrees with Burton that barbershop’s “special sauce” and wide appeal comes from creating harmonies with the human voice.
“I think there’s something about harmony that is primal,” he says. I think when people sing in harmony, when they hear harmony, everybody gravitates to that, in whatever form.”
He points out that the reference to unity in the event’s title has several layers of meaning. “What that does for me, is that it brings people together,” he notes. “[Barbershop] singing is a sport – it kind of transcends political divides and racial; it keeps people all on the same playing field. And so, generally, we’re free of religious or political discussions…we’re all there for the same art. We’re all there to create music together no matter who we are. We’ve got people of all ages, ethnicities, political divides, backgrounds, and from all over the world. I think that’s important.”
“It’s the same thing with the other two groups,” he adds, “so I think that’s how we hit on ‘United Voices.’ It’s a barbershop unity project.”
