BQPA/PIONEERS
Barbershop Quartet Preservation Association
2013 Spring Festival
Report
The
Western BQPA/Pioneers quartet festival was again a rousing success. The
official opening of The Festival was on Wednesday evening, 10 April,
2013 with the AZ quartet chapter hosting a spaghetti dinner at the
Italian Club in Phoenix along with attending
the chapter meeting. There were approximately 35 singers there sharing
the joy of quartet singing. The parade of quartets was put together by our past
Western Festival Chairman, Frank Fliszar. It was a great evening of singing and
fellowship.
On Thursday, April 18, more attendees began to arrive at the
Tempe, Embassy Suites and as usual the quartet activity quickly accelerated. Along with the
increased quartet activity about 12 guys went off to play golf. When the golfers
returned there was quite
a number of quartets, standing in fours, facing each other singing songs
they knew with several doing some real time woodshedding and finding chords that
many have never sang before but seemed to fit the melody being sung by the lead
singer. Much of the woodshedding activity was happening in the hotel lounge/dining area
after breakfast. At 5:30 PM, as the golfers returned, the free bar at
the hotel was going
strong, as well at Gerry Carroll’s happy hour in his room. Several of
the wives had enjoyed a few hours at one of the local Arizona malls. One of the
gals commented, that when you have seen one shopping center, you have seen em’all! ;-)
Our Board of Directors conducted our annual business meeting around 4
PM. As our officers reported, along with other appointed chairmen, it was easy to
see that each one had a good handle on our planned activities for the immediate and
distant future. Our Festival Chairman, Jim Milner, assisted by retiring Frank Fliszar
had done a good job!
Friday afternoon brought new singers from all over the
country. We had singers from NED, Florida, the Twin Cities, Texas, New Mexico, California, Oregon,
Salt Lake, Colorado, Nevada, Illinois, The mid Atlantic Area and several other BHS
districts. Of our 400 members of the BQPA, we ended up with around 110 attending
the quartet festival. We had 16 new folks joined the BQPA at this festival, so we
saw many new faces that had not attended either the Western Quartet Festival or the
Chicago Festival before. Our organization seems to be growing in numbers as well as
enthusiasm, every year!
Friday evening we had the pick up quartet contest, where we draw
names from a hat to form quartets. It ended up that 12 quartets participated. Each
quartet had a minimum of 4 hours to select their song and quartet name. This
seemed to improve the quality of the singing. Also, Tom Noble, our president had
developed some new judging criteria, which added to making a great contest. There was no
doubt that the
quartet that won the “gold medal with purple sash” performed the best.
The gold medal quartet was “Men From Earth”, with Gary Mathews . Bob
Baltensberger, John Grosnick and Bob Standfast . Second and third ribbons were
presented, (there is another story about these 2nd and 3rd ribbons) to the “Aardvarks” and
“Brady’s Bunch” respectively, along with the first place
medals. A complete breakdown of the quartet entries are listed at the end of
this report.)
We all enjoyed the free happy hour hosted by the hotel. This was a
daily free bar. The only challenge that I observed, there was only one bartender which
seemed to limit the dispensing of free drinks. However to compensate for this, The BQPA
provided free beer chits to all registered attendees on Both Friday and Saturday. Ya
can’t beat that at WalMart can you?
Lest I forget, the golfers had another
enjoyable day on the golf course. Lots of tee singing but I did not hear about any record
setting scores. Well maybe one, some number thrown out was 127 or something close.
Saturday morning was taken up with having a hot breakfast on the
patio and polishing off the morning with some quarteting on the hotel patio as well. The
Board of Directors held our semi annual general meeting with about 40 members in
attendance. The
Board laid out some statistics on membership loss since our Festival in
Chicago in the fall of 2012. The names of those members and supporters who had
passed on in the last several months were read and a moment of silence honoring these
folks was taken. Reports were made by the board members bringing everyone up
to speed regarding our organizational status. We had signed on 16 new members at
this
convention which was a good sign of positive growth. Although our
attendance was down a bit for this convention, many had sent word that they would be
attending our scheduled Quartet Festival in Chicago in the fall.
Donations were running strong and we will be OK as far as covering our
expenses for this Spring’s function. I remind everyone there is
no BQPA registration expense or show fees to belonging and
participating in the BQPA, save a small life time joining fee of $15.00.
There was some discussion regarding the BQPA previously having made a
donation supporting the “Platoon” quartet program originating in the FWD.
Bill Kane of the Phoenix chapter had made a briefing to the Board of Directors on
Thursday. This is a district level program just getting off the ground, which encourages
quarteting at the district conventions. This would be a feather in the BQPA hat as well as
generating some interest in future BQPA activities.
There was considerable discussion and support for the development
of a BQPA/Pioneers song book. The plan is to develop a song book that will be
comprised
primarily of public domain songs arranged by our seasoned, long time
barbershoppers who support the continued preservation of “The Old Songs” by singing
them. There was some discussion for an old tyme quartet contest in Chicago,
but generated
insufficient support from the BOD, or the attending members to consider,
further action.
Our BQPA website is now updated, exhibiting the details about the
Fall BQPA Festival in Chicago. The hotel convention venue is excellent and the room
rate and amenities are exceptional. Gerry Carroll has done a great job on these
negotiations. Visit
www.bqpa.com for further information.
A motion to adjourn and seconded brought the meeting to
termination.
As the day went on more attendees filtered into the hotel.
The quartets who would be performing in the evening mingled with the other guys and enjoyed
quarteting . 8:00 PM brought on the evenings quartet show, put together by Paul Ludwig. The program was:
1 The Friday night contest winner, “Men From Earth”
2 Backspin. From the Mesa Lamplighter Chapter
3 Joint Venture. The Tucson Chapter.
4 Speakeasy. Primarily the Phoenix
area
5 Twilight Time. Mesa
AZ.
6 2 Under Par. Arizona Quartet Chapter.
7 Arizona Chord Company. from the Sun City chapter
8 Audacity
The quality of performance was absolutely outstanding. Audacity,
who have performed at our festival for the past 5 consecutive years had an
outstanding new program. The show audience was very enthusiastic and quite large and
they really
enjoyed the show.
I must acknowledge the great work done by Tommy and Linda
Noble. With help from BQPA member Barney Griffin of the quartet “2 Under Par”, AZQC they set
up and manned the Sound System for the Friday night contest and the Saturday
night show.
They also returned the Sound System to its storage area at the end of
the Saturday night show. Great work guys! ! ! I might add that Lee Taylor, from
Salt Lake has been appointed as VP, replacing Rex Touslee!
The quartet “Speak Easy” was made up of 4 young men who are new to
the local Phoenix scene. Two of the boys joined the BQPA. Most of the show
quartets were heading into the FWD contest cycle and were top notch. After
the show, many stayed late to sing with our BQPA members. There was singing and the
sharing of fellowship going on, well into the night. Did I mention continued singing of the
“Old Songs” and
fellowship? This is what the BQPA is all about!
There was a lot of activity on Sunday morning in the hotel, with
folks being shuttled to the Airport and those who drove from Southern California. The folks from
the AZ area were clearing the hotel heading home. The festival was a again a
great success
generating a lot of knew found enthusiasm from many, especially those
members who joined the BQPA at the festival. Jim Milner our newly appointed Western
BQPA, Tempe Chairman will begin negotiation for next years, 2014 Festival at
the Embassy Suites.
As my last comments, I want to again thank the BQPA/Pioneers Board
of Directors and our appointed committee chairman for your dedicated service to our
organization. Youare the best!
Respectfully submitted
Jack Martin, IPP
BQPA/Pioneer Pick-up Quartet Contest
Tempe, AZ - April 13
th
, 2013
Contestants in order of appearance
#1 OLD KIDS ON THE BLOCK
Tenor – John
Rambo
Baritone – Jim Rapp
Lead – Emmett
Bossing Bass – Bill
Myers
#2 SWEET SPOT
Tenor – Linda
Noble
Baritone – Paul Fernando
Lead – Dick
Bek
Bass – Jack Martin
#3 MY FAVORITE QUARTET
Tenor – Gary
Mathews
Baritone – Bernie Esberner
Lead – Rick
Ives
Bass – Barney Griffin
#4 MEN FROM EARTH
Tenor – Rob
Baltensberger Baritone – John
Grosnick
Lead – Gary
Mathews
Bass – Bob Standfast
#5 4 OVER PAR
Tenor – Harlan
Mellem
Baritone – Will Winder
Lead – Gary
Efron
Bass – John Rambo
#6 THE INOCULATORS (we’ll give it a shot)
Tenor – Jerry
Steffen
Baritone – Bob Calderwood
Lead –
Jerry
Larson
Bass – Pete Tyree
#7 THE LOST BOYS
Tenor – Kent
Shepherd
Baritone – Jim Brandt
Lead –
Gerry
Carroll
Bass – Frank Fliszar
#8 THE AARDVARKS
Tenor – Ed
Simons
Baritone – Lee Taylor
Lead –
Paul
Fernado
Bass – Norm Wolfe
#9 THE TOM TOMS
Tenor – Tom
Millot
Baritone – Paul Ludwig
Lead – Tom
Haynes
Bass – Dave Brady
#10 MATCHING SHORTS
Tenor – Jim
Angell
Baritone – Pat Lanphier
Lead –
Collin
McKinney
Bass – John Nichols
#11 AFTER FOUR
Tenor – Tommy
Noble
Baritone – Jim Milner
Lead –
Rich
Vormelker
Bass – Collin McKinney
#12 BRADY’S BUNCH
Tenor – Emmett
Bossing
Baritone – Chuck Guthrie
Lead – Dave
Brady
Bass - Jim Gallagher
THIRD PLACE BRADY’S BUNCH
SECOND
PLACE
THE AARDVARKS
FIRST PLACE MEN FROM EARTH