It’s turned out to be a far busier July than I had expected!

These days I am busy with all sorts of preparation for the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles’ upcoming concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The concert is called Sure On This Shining Night, and while my primary job is as pianist, for this concert I am also serving as an arranger, singer, and beatboxer.

So my hands are full lately; tonight I’m finishing up work on an arrangement for the GMCLA Alive Music Project Youth Chorus (that needs a cool acronym or something), which will perform a three-song set on the concert. The arrangement is a medley of Like A Prayer (Madonna), I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Whitney Houston), and Just Dance (Lord Gaga). I hope that excites you.

And hey, even if it doesn’t excite you, you should still come to the concert. If pop divas aren’t your thing, then perhaps beautiful choral works by Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen are. And if even that won’t do, then you might enjoy “The End of It All”, a newly commissioned piece for choir and electronica composed by the DJ John Tejada, to be performed by the chorus alongside the composer on stage.

I still haven’t quite come to grips with the fact that I’ll be playing piano in Disney Hall in three weeks. There’s a lot of practicing and rehearsing to do between now and then – not to mention the fact that I still need to pick out a good tie.

Beatboxing…to a Michael Jackson arrangement…in Disney Hall. We’re not trying to make any big postmodern statements or anything, but that’s what I’ll be doing in three weeks. One of many things I’ll be doing, actually. I hope you can come and check it out.

I’ve been waiting for a particular YouTube video to become available so that I could link to it in this post, but as it has not arrived yet and I am chomping at the bit to write about my experience with the Westminster Chorus, I will post the video when it arrives.

The Westminster Chorus is, for me, the latest in a string of musical blessings to come into my life. Westminster is a youth barbershop chorus based out of Orange County, and I joined in late May of this year. If you don’t know — and I certainly didn’t, a few short months ago — Barbershop is a uniquely American style of singing with a rich history and an organization to back it up. That organization is the Barbershop Harmony Society, an international organization whose membership numbers around 30,000.

I’ll spare you the technical details of what defines the barbershop style, and instead direct you to a few videos I’ve seen that exemplify what Barbershop singing is all about.

Love Me – Sung by the OC Times, a barbershop quartet, all of whose members sing with Westminster.
Let’s Burn Up The Town/Their Hearts Were Full of Spring/Goodbye Dixie Goodbye – Classic barbershop set from Westminster.
Chordbusters March – Sung by The Vagrants, also a Westminster quartet. The final chord is the clearest example I’ve ever heard of the “Barbershop Ring”. No one is singing that super-high note you hear at the end; those are the notes and their overtones lining up in perfect accord.

I’ll never forget my first Westminster rehearsal. I was a visitor, a potential member, a no one, but the moment I opened my mouth to sing the first warm-up, and felt my voice in perfect accord with the other sixty voices around me, I knew that I had found something really, really special. Westminster is a choral treasure, and I want more people to hear about the chorus — not just because I’m in it, but because I believe that the choral art in general could take a few cues from Westminster. Watch this video to see what I mean. Barbershop singing isn’t limited to barbershop arrangements. And have you ever seen a choir in which each member so thoroughly and joyfully takes responsibility for delivering the story and the spirit of the music? I show that video to my classical choral friends and most of them freak out. It’s enlightening to realize that the choral art does not require one to stand at attention, folder in hand, eyebrows raised, and expressionless for the length of the song. Choral singing can and should be an endeavor that involves one’s whole body and one’s entire spirit.

This, I believe, is what Westminster achieves, and why I am so hooked on it.

Not to mention the gold medal that we took in Philadelphia. Yep, we won it, beating out the longtime barbershop bastions The Vocal Majority by just 0.6 percentage points. And yes, we worked our asses off for those gold medals, both as a group and as individuals. But for me — and I’ve always been this way — the blessing of Westminster has nothing to do with a gold medal I get to pin on my shirt at future BHS conventions. It has everything to do with the hard work itself, and the lessons and insights and new understandings and new friendships gained from it. In just a few short months, Westminster has made of me a better musician and a more sensitive artist, and that is a gift far greater than any medal.

Yep, I’ll say it: I’m a barbershopper for life!