An Inter-Chapter Sing

I didn't get home until almost 1:00 this morning, and it was worth every minute of missed sleep. The Montclair, NJ chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society invited every chapter in the northern division of the Mid-Atlantic District to get together for some singing and getting acquainted. Glad they did!

I carpooled with four of the other guys from our chorus and got there right about 7:30, which was supposed to be when things were going to get started. The line to get in was out the door and getting longer by the minute. It took nearly 30 minutes to get my admission fee - pardon me, donation - collected and get my hand stamped. Walked inside and found that the hall was crowded and loud.

Of course, there had been quartets forming in the line while we were waiting to get in. Inside, there were more quartets being formed of guys from different chapters - usually three or four were singing at any given moment. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does raise the volume considerably. In a good way.

We found a table to congregate at and settled in. Rich showed up with a young man we had met at the state fair a couple of weeks ago. He's a bass, too, and we already have four basses, but he's a young guy and we could certainly use more young guys. Happily, he seemed to be favorably impressed with the quality of the music all through the evening.

There was certainly some good quality music being made, too. Both choruses and quartets made some sweet harmony, sang some rousing songs, and generally entertained well. We didn't do badly, ourselves.

Out of all the choruses from all over northern New Jersey and southeastern New York (including a chorus from the Big City and one from Long Island), we were the only chorus that actually had choreography as part of our singing. Not that everybody else just stood up like a bunch of fence posts. Most of them were clearly alive and put good facial expressions in to their performances. Still, nobody else moved from their initial positions, nor did they use their hands and arms in a coordinated manner. I was disappointed, as I had hoped to see what other choruses looked like doing their moves. Turned out they didn't really have any moves. ;-)

The only real downer about the evening was that they had said they were going to teach some tags, and that didn't happen. They did say that more people showed up than they had expected, and there were more choruses and quartets that wanted to perform than expected. Probably that made things run later than planned, though they shut down about 10:30 rather than at the announced 11:00.

In spite of the early end to the evening, my ride stuck around for longer than some of us wanted. Still, we got away eventually. Some of us did feel the need to load up on the chocolate covered strawberries that were sitting on the buffet tables. We heard the announcement saying that everybody should help with the excess of goodies, so we acted. I acted in a pretty small way, as neither my sweetie nor I need to scarf up a lot of sugar. Fred was able to make up for any shortcoming of mine, though, so it all worked out.

Other than a delay on the interstate on the way home, that trip went smoothly, and I finally got to get to bed. The only problem with that end of the evening was that I had to get up this morning. Maybe an afternoon nap will compensate for that. We'll see.