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Essentials in
Quartet Singing
The Story of a Champion
Men in Black's journey to gold
Updated: 10/5/2005 10:13:11 AM
By Oliver Merrill
When Men In Black formed in early 2002, only one member had an idea of what barbershop music was about. Ray Johnson, who had been singing barbershop since he was nine years old, started singing tags with a couple of friends from the Hartt School of Music. With Ray singing baritone, Karl Hudson on bass and Oliver Merrill singing lead, our next challenge was to find a tenor. That spring, with only a week to go before the preliminary contest and with three failed attempts at hooking a tenor, Ray turned to his friend Graham to keep us afloat for the contest. We narrowly outscored the competition and went to Portland, Oregon where we finished last out of 21 quartets.
It was in Portland where we discovered how unprepared we really were, in addition to being unfamiliar with the art form. On top of that, soon after the contest, we found ourselves needing a new tenor. So that fall we held auditions on the University of Hartford campus and that was where we met Tony Nasto. Tony was from Pennsylvania and had a brief background singing barbershop music. His sound blended well with ours and his own motivation eased the learning process. We spent the year singing whenever we could and had several performances around the Northeastern District. We returned to the international stage again in 2003 and placed 13th. By that time, we had begun to settle into our parts and really started choosing the songs best suited for us based on our vocal range and our age. The following year we were both excited and disappointed by the results of our effort in Montreal. As perfectionists, we couldn’t help being disappointed. But we also knew that a jump of 8 places in a year was nothing to scoff at.
That next year we refined our sound more, challenging ourselves with harder music and really pushing ourselves in rehearsals and performances. One of the first real breakthroughs we made was to remind ourselves that whatever happens, we must have fun or it wasn’t worth doing. With that in mind, since that time, we have never had a rehearsal in which we have spent the whole time rehearsing. We could only get together now once a week for about 3 to 4 hours. We would regularly spend about an hour and a half warming up and singing, and then spend the rest of the time either laughing, intently discussing issues . . . or both.
We chose our contest songs early that year and at the preliminary contest in the spring of 2004 we scored higher than ever. Our district was excited and we flew down to Louisville with high hopes. We placed 8th that week and resolved to earn a medal the following year in Salt Lake City. The fall of 2004 was spent performing nearly every weekend for different chapters, anniversaries and birthday parties. By winter, we had decided the songs to compete with in the spring, and we worked on finding the best way to tell the stories each song conveyed. We put our contest songs at the end of every set we sang in performance, working on phrasing and presentation in our dressing room or in the car. With Karl now living in New York City and Ray living in Massachusetts, our performances became our rehearsals until summer began.
We realized that we should get a coach to help us fine tune our presentation and to make sure we kept pushing ourselves up until the very end. Kirk Young agreed to coach us and did an excellent job of being honest and keeping us focused up to the International Convention. With Kirk’s help, along with people like Rich Knapp, Bill Bolis and Dwaine Brobst, we developed the confidence, work ethic and our own unique approach to the music and the art form.
We were honored this year to accept 1st place in Salt Lake City. We in Men In Black are proud of what we accomplished this year, and over the past four years. Were it not for the support of the Northeastern District, our coaches and the time we spent laughing instead of singing, we might never have made it this far. We look forward to this next year with newfound excitement and hope to sing for many new audiences. We’ve got a lot of rehearsing to do.
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