Our Vision

VisionWe will become recognised in the South West as a high-quality mixed chorus,
by being
Positionentertaining performers who sing contemporary genres mainly in the barbershop style,
providing
Propositionfun experiences to members and emotional impact on our audiences,
by being
Attributesinclusive, authentic and committed to maintaining a growth mindset,
by bringing to life the spirit of
Mantraenjoyment, education and excellence.

Definitions

Some of the words in our vision have specific meanings here that might not be apparent at first, so here's how we're using them.

Barbershop style

We take the “barbershop style” to be quite different from the “barbershop genre” - songs that are traditionally sung by barbershop quartets. For us, the style means expressing the emotion of a song by concentrating on lyrical content, rather than instrumentation; this consists of choosing songs that have good lyrical content, often having all parts sing in homophony, locking and ringing chords to find musicality alongside the lyrics, varying tempo freely to make the lyric more conversational, using harmony parts above and below the melody 1), often using the circle of fifths for chord progressions.

Contemporary

Our use of “contemporary” corresponds to the art history period from around 1950 to the present. We enjoy very recent songs for their immediate recognition, as well as plenty of good music from the second half of the 20th Century.

1)
many choirs only harmonise below the melody
Enjoyment · Education · Excellence