Editor's note: Garden Grove resident Bill Bowring is second from right in the picture.
For the past 19 years the Orange Empire Barbershop Chorus, which features several members from Garden Grove, has consistently sold out its annual Christmas Cabaret shows and is set to perform its 20th annual event.
Editor's note: Garden Grove resident Bill Bowring is second from right in the picture.
For the past 19 years the Orange Empire Barbershop Chorus, which features several members from Garden Grove, has consistently sold out its annual Christmas Cabaret shows and is set to perform its 20th annual event.
The Cabaret is set for Friday and Saturday Dec. 6 and 7, at the La Habra Community Center, 101 W. La Habra Blvd, in La Habra.
It's a luncheon and/or evening of fun and frolic, as the different quartets not only sing fun Christmas and holiday melodies but tell their “barbershop-style” jokes that keep the audience laughing and involved in their performances.
Lunches are at 12:30 p.m.; dinners at 7 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday, served by the “singing waiters” from the chorus, followed by a rollicking fun-filled holiday program, full of clever antics, with a promise to keep the laugher rolling too.
OEC chorus members hail from Garden Grove and other local Orange County cities as well as south county to as far as San Clemente.
Among those from Garden Grove is Bill Bowring, who’s a bass singer.
They are men from all walks of life who simply love to sing four-part harmony; they hold jobs in office management, school teaching and counselors, to retired bankers and police officers, to name a few occupations.
Some OEC members started singing with their siblings when they were kids and some worked their way through college singing and have recording labels and have performed with some of the greats in music.
It’s not unusual for barbershopers to have begun singing in a church choir and then transitioned to barbershop harmony.
Also, it's a practice of barbershopers to learn approximately 12 “Pole Cat” songs, which every barbershop group learns – so a barbershop performer can literally go around the world and join with any barbershop group and know and sing those songs.
Barbershop harmony is a true American art form, just as jazz is and was originally founded as “The Barbershop Harmony Society,” by Owen C. Cash.
Barbershop Harmony Society is the largest all-male a cappella singing organization in the world with nearly 30,000 members in more than 800 chapters in the United States and Canada.
The chorus draws members from Garden Grove, La Palma, Fullerton Yorba Linda, Orange, Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress and south to San Clemente.
For information about the chorus or to order Cabaret tickets, call the hotline at 714-871-7673 or visit www.oechorus.org.
