Youth In Harmony!

If you’re like most high school choral directors, you’ve probably asked yourself, “How can I attract more male singers to my choral program and keep them interested in singing?” The Barbershop Harmony Society and the RiverCities Jubilee Chorus want to help address this issue.

The Society’s Youth in Harmony (YIH) program provides an introduction to a distinctly American art form that’ll excite your students about vocal music. Why Barbershop harmony? It’s fun! Students enjoy singing it, thrill to the performance opportunities, and share something that’s unique and novel. Not only do your current singers gain satisfaction, but their infectious enthusiasm can recruit other students.

Barbershop harmony is helpful in promoting a number of musical skills:

• Improves ear training for accurate tuning.
• Develops a strong sense of tonality, resolving around the Circle of Fifths.
• Helps develop sensitivity to chord balancing and choral blend.
• Stresses proper diction in execution of word sounds.
• Builds interpretive skills to provide a more exciting performance.

We support our Southwestern District’s Harmony Explosion (HX) Camp, a four-day seminar for teachers and students designed to interest and involve high school students in four-part a cappella harmony and to provide positive ideas about leisure singing. The Harmony Explosion Camp features traditional male glee club music as well as Barbershop harmony, arranged especially for the young male voice.

The HX Camp offered in this region will be held on the campus of Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. Presently the camp size is limited to 130 students and 25 music educators. Tuition, which includes dormitory housing and meals, is $150. Full scholarships are provided for music educators and either full or partial scholarships may be available for your students.

Please consider this exciting program for your students and for yourself. You may even send your students to HX Camp if you are unable to attend yourself. Chaperones are provided at the Camp. To learn more about this event, visit the Society’s Southwestern District website, swd.org.