Harmony Brigades

A Brief History

The first Harmony Brigade was held in North Carolina in 1993. People were thinking that singing polecats at a convention afterglow was good fun, but it would be even better fun if you learned some new songs and spent a whole weekend just singing songs.

The original Harmony Brigade movement used songs in the men’s range and was only open to men. Gradually some Brigades started accepting any participant as long as they could sing in the men’s range, and Brigades such as our own UK Harmony Brigade, the Mixed Harmony Brigade of New England, the Atlantic Harmony Brigade and the European Harmony Brigade have been welcoming all singers for several years.

Mixed brigades are great fun, but for many women’s-range singers it means singing a part or a pitch which is not your natural home – generally tenors and leads will sing men’s tenor, and baritones and basses will sing men’s lead or baritone.

The first US Treble Harmony Brigade was started in 2013 and in 2023 we ran a treble-range Extreme Quartetting stream at LABBS Harmony College. So now we are ready to run the first UK Treble Harmony Brigade!

The Weekend Itself

A Brigade weekend will always include:

• The opportunity to sing every song you have learned with as many people as possible. Coloured lanyards help you assemble a quartet easily and “dance cards” encourage you to sing with everyone.
• A contest, where you sing a randomly-selected song with your randomly-selected quartet. There is a checking process before the contest to make sure everyone taking part is contest-ready – that’s only fair on your fellow quartetters!
• A concert, where the brigade chorus will sing some of the songs, people can volunteer to do other acts, and the prize-winning random quartet get to exhibit their skills.
• Prizes! (More about those later)

We hope that the UK Treble Harmony Brigade will also include:

• Optional activities on Thursday night and Friday for people who arrive early.
• Sing-outs to show the good people of Nottingham a bit of our mad barbershop world.
• Merch! (Please let us know if you’d like to organise this)
• More prizes! (More about those later, too)

Singing starts on Thursday evening and the formal activities will run from Friday at 6:30pm to Sunday at 10:30am (times to be finalised). If you have to work on Friday and need to arrive later on Friday evening we will make sure the registration desk is still open for you.

A successful Brigade requires a small army of volunteers behind the scenes. If you’d like to be part of the team making this happen then let us know. There is a link to email us behind the little envelope in the top left hand corner of this page.