Harmony Sweepstakes National Finals

Jason, here;

Wow, did we have fun at Nationals.  I love being in the Pacific Northwest Region, because as soon as we won the regional, other PNW groups who had been to the Finals began emailing us with advice and insights based on their experiences.  This advice was indispensible, particularly the bits of wisdom offered us by The Baudboys and V-Chords, as they have had the most recent experiences.  Thank you to all of you for your help! 

Also of incredible help was the Masterchorale and Gary Witley and his crew from Olympia.  These guys run the smoothest-running show I've ever been to.  The ducks are always in a row, and the attitude is always one of gracious hospitality.  They just do it right.

The other groups blew us away with their talent, but they were even more impressive as people backstage.  The atmosphere was one of complete support for the artform of vocal music.  We were able to watch the show on a closed-circuit feed in the common area by the dressing rooms, and there was genuine applause, shout of "yeah, sing it!," spontaneous outburtsts of "WOW!," that made us feel like we were all in the audience just enjoying a great show with some great singers.  We all laughed and joked with each other, learned about each other's kids and families, and swapped stories of fun gigs and great audiences.  If you ever get a chance to hang with cartoon Johnny, ask about their way of doing karaoke...

Backstage, we felt that the judges would have a very difficult time deciding the winners and placements.  Having been to many different kinds of festivals as a performer and as an adjudicator, I have come to the conclusion that judging sheets and tallies are much like Douglas Adams's Bistro Mathematics: the numbers don't add up, and one cannot accurately quantify the entire experience on any known scoring sheet.  As a judge, I more enjoy being at non-competitive festivals, where I can point out ways for a group to improve upon an already good performance.  I can give my opinion, and they can use what they feel applies, and chuck the rest.  At competitive festivals, I've been in a situation as a judge in which the group that scored the most points on the tally sheet was not my favorite group of the night, and I start to understand figure skating and gymnastics a bit better.  Sure, the group that scores higher ends up winning, but I will end up becoming a fan and attending concerts of the groups I liked most from the viewpoint of an audience member :-)

I only bring this up because I enjoyed hearing different audience members after the show discussing who they thought should have won.  They all made very good cases for their opinion.  I can guarantee each group had a pretty even chance of winning had we merely selected judges at random from the audience.  As we were getting ready to go on stage for the awards part of the show, I remember one member from another group saying, "Geez, guys, I have no idea who will win an award; it could be any of us.  Good Show!"  And that pretty much sums it up.  We don't envy the judges their difficult decisions.

To give you an idea of how far off I was from the official results, I was thinking we would be in a four-way race for 5th place.  Granted, we could only judge based on what we saw from the wings or on the TV in the dressing area, but I had guessed the top three would include Maxx Factor, 3 Men and a Melody, Love Notes, or Cartoon Johnny.  My taste runs more toward the soul and rock end of things, so I kind of thought 3 Men and Cartoon Johnny would be duking it out for a top spot.  I thought that the rest of us were pretty much guaranteed even shots at the remaining slots, with maybe a slight edge in favor of Mouth Beats, who deservedly won Best Innovative Composition, which means the best I had hoped for was 6th place.

Needless to say, I was somewhat shocked when our name was called twice for awards!  In fact, I was told by many people that I looked shocked.  We couldn't even hear the announcement very well for best arrangement, so I thought Chris had won for his awesome arrangement of "Ghost Train,"  like he did at Regionals.

This year saw mostly barbershop and contemporary pop-style groups.  I would love to see more folk and madrigal groups, as well as jazz and doo wop, and other a cappella forms, competing at the regional level.  I think the audience would love the variety, and the singers, too.

I guess one more superlative won't matter:  Thanks for an incredible, stupendous, awesome, hugemongously cool experience, and we hope to see everyone supporting your local regional competitions next spring.

I'll try and post a few photos later.

-Jason
"The Old One"
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