Former Mighty Oaks chorus members Jimmy Schofield, left, and Gary Smith meet up during rehearsal after not seeing each other for 24 years. Photo by Bernadette Lauritzen
The night before the previously scheduled October concert, Sound Check, the guest quartet from Santa Fe, may have taken the only existing photo at practice the evening before the show. Courtesy/Bernadette Lauritzen
By BERNADETTE LAURITZEN
Los Alamos
When life gives you lemons, make twice as much lemonade and have a fundraiser, right? The October Barbershop Chorus extravaganza with the Santa Fe Harmonizers and the Lasses and Lads of Enchantment has been revived to debut Friday, Jan. 26 at the United Church of Los Alamos. The 7 p.m. performance will honor tickets previously sold, are selling more now and will have them at the door.
The groups were preparing, by living the International Barbershop Harmony Society of, “actively embracing, supporting and recruiting everyone-in-harmony.” The teams practiced many months, secured a special guest act, garnered sponsors, and hung the flyers right up until about three hours before showtime. COVID took down enough members of the chorus that even the Department of Health suggested it was best to postpone.
After the health and healing of many weeks, it was realized that holidays combined with travel and availability of venues, meant a long delay. Director Maurice Sheppard, who started with the Lads of Enchantment 31 years ago, has enhanced the current chorus, which added some lasses to their title. Now, the Lasses and Lads of Enchantment is open to everyone.
Sheppard directed the songsters at three assisted living homes in Santa Fe, providing holiday entertainment. “We topped off the year by singing to honor our fallen veterans at the Wreaths Across America ceremony in Santa Fe,” said Sheppard. “We are so fortunate that Sound Check agreed to come back for our January shows-great guys and great musicians!”
Jimmy Schofield of Sound Check was sitting in the audience as the local choruses were warming up. It was then that he saw the familiar face of Gary Smith from the Santa Fe Harmonizers. The men were once members in a Visalia, Calif., chorus, called the Mighty Oaks. The year they met was 1996.
“I was a sophomore at Mt. Whitney High School; Gary sang bass in the Chorus!” Schofield graduated high school in 1999, so call it kismet, Divine intervention or the power of music, but 24 years later and almost 1,000 miles away, they reunited once again.
While sharing the story, Schofield explained how music was an outlet for him even before meeting Smith, but in regard to barbershop music especially. Barbershop music had the power to allow him to contribute to something greater than himself.
“Music was a conduit for me to break off my barriers of social anxiety and shyness,” Schofield said. “There is something magical about ringing chords and knowing that I had contributed to that sound. Music, but barbershop in particular, has a bond that creates a connection that time and distance can never break.”
The two-hour program will feature the combined choruses, plus three local quartets and Salt Lake City’s Sound Check. “I Believe in Music,” is the theme of the show, and the foundation for the entire evening. Many of the selections have a transporting quality to take you back to the past or lighten your load for the road ahead.
“Some of the songs that the music director and committee chose for this barbershop show give me goosebumps and ‘up and down my spine’ chills when we sing them,” Show Chair and LALOE Board President John Baillie said. “The last song is sung with such great excitement, clearly the chapters favorite, ‘Ride the Chariot,’ especially when the tenors hit all those high notes.”
To learn more, visit www.laloe.org or find them on Facebook @ Lads of Enchantment, no experience required. A Saturday show also at 7 p.m., will be hosted by the Santa Fe Harmonizers at St. John’s Unted Methodist.
