The Not-So-Dying Art of the Barbershop Quartet

The Not-So-Dying Art of the Barbershop Quartet
A barbershop quartet perform on July 27, 2013 in Universal City, California. Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images for Variety
Michael Kurek
Updated:

One of the great apple-pie traditions of American music, right up there with a marching band or Dixieland band, is the good old barbershop quartet. My mind goes right to those white gazebos in parks and town squares and those beribboned straw hats, big mustaches, and striped jackets that barbershop quartets typically sport.

While thinking about the famous Buffalo Bills, the quartet who sang “Lida Rose” in “The Music Man” movie (the subject of my last Epoch Times article), I began to wonder whether barbershop quartets still exist in America, or if it’s a dead or dying art form?
Michael Kurek
Michael Kurek
Author
American composer Michael Kurek is the composer and producer of the Billboard No. 1 classical album, “The Sea Knows,” and a member of the Grammy Producers and Engineers Wing of the Recording Academy. He is Professor Emeritus of Composition at Vanderbilt University. The most recent of his many awards for composition was being named in March 2022 “Composer Laureate of the State of Tennessee” by the Tennessee State Legislature and governor. For more information and music, visit MichaelKurek.com
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