Membership

The varieties of participation...

We value the participation of a large variety of people in our organization.
By Harmony Society rules, only men who sing can be "official" members of the chapter. However, our chapter has developed means by which non-singers and women can be an integral part of the chapter.

This page describes how a singing man goes about becoming a member of the chapter. If you are not a singer or not a man but want to be part of the dynamic family that is The West Towns Chorus, please see the "POW" (Partners of West Towns) page for how you can participate in our organization.

Now, if you ARE a man who sings, and that's what you would like to do with us, we follow a pretty simply process.

You've found us. Now what?

First, you visit us, either on your own or as the guest of one of our members. You will be greeted, interviewed, and given a name badge. Our greeter, probably with the help of one of our Music Team members, will determine what barbershop voice part you most likely sing.

Then you will be introduced to the section leader for your part and he will invite you to sing with us on the risers. While it is not necessary that you read music to sing with us, for each visit we will still loan you a book that contains our current repertoire (at least you can read the words!).

Usually, in the first half of our rehearsal we work on revisiting or improving songs from our repertoire, on learning new music and on singing technique. The last half or so of our rehearsal is devoted to perfecting one or two specific songs. As we near contest time (our contests occur in the last week of September ordinarily), we spend that time working on our "contest set" of two songs. Depending upon where we are in the contest cycle, we might encourage you to stay on the risers with us to work on those songs; but later, we would probably be too far along with our singing and choreography (yes, we do move) for you to keep up, so we would expect you to stand down for a while, watching and listening.

The Audition

With few exceptions (mostly made for men with considerable barbershop singing experience) we encourage you to visit and sing with us several times. After a few visits, if you are interested in becoming a West Towns Chorus member, we set up an audition with our music team. The audition itself consists of your performing your voice part (lead, tenor, baritone, bass) in a quartet singing a standard barbershop arrangement you have learned. You will also be asked to match tones, sing scales, and sing some common intervals. The audition is conducted by the Director and, usually, the Vice President of Music and Performance, along with members of the Chorus Music Team. You will know at the end of the audition if you have "passed the test."

Don't be concerned about the fact of the audition. We are interested in hearing your singing in a smaller ensemble. By the time of the audition we probably already have a sense of how you sing in the larger ensemble. If you can sing, we will most likely already know something about how well you do it. The idea is to find a way to bring you into the fold, not to exclude you.

After you have passed your audition, the chapter membership must vote to admit you to membership, an action that usually occurs one or two weeks after your audition. The vote is taken during a weekly chapter meeting that is held right after the first half of the chorus rehearsal.

From that point forward, while we welcomed you to our home to spend some time with us, now we welcome you to our West Towns Family as a member of the family.