East York Barbershoppers

EYBS Blog

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EYBS Holiday Party 2023
Posted On: Dec 19, 2023

Merry Christmas! It was wonderful seeing friends and families gathered around us once again to celebrate the season with some good ole' holiday caroling. Mr. Penstone returns to us once again providing us with some top notch quality emcee-ing; much thanks to the lovely pianist Amanta for reprising her role this year; and we were joined by plenty of muscial guests as usual.

Following that, some familiar quartets: Constructive Criticism (with George Shields as a special guest!), and the Green Brothers with Opie and Pat.

A special solo, performed by Malisha - we've always been impressed by how good she sounds!

The ladies of Moving Parts and Moving Sparks joins us for a number or two (with a humorous take on how modern holidays are celebrated 📱)

and, saving the best for last, one of our final guests... Maple Reserve! (singing one of the only holiday songs in their repertoire... in a major key 😉)

Our favorite hippo hero shows up towards the end of the show... ðŸ¦›ðŸ¦›ðŸ¦›

and to close it off, everyone in the East York Barbershop family wishes yall a merry little Christmas now! See you in the New Year.

Singout at the Shops at Don Mills
Posted On: Dec 15, 2023
This past Friday we had the pleasure of singing for the folks at the Shops at Don Mills. It was a ton of fun, the crowd was great, and we saw smiles and cheers all around.
We'll be singing again on Thursday (12/21) and Friday (12/22) again next week from 4pm to 6pm. We hope you stay for a song or two if you're around during those times.

Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday!
Happy 98th Birthday George!
Posted On: Dec 5, 2023
A very, very happy 98th birthday to our very own George Shields! During the break at last week's practice we celebrated with the chorus with some lovely cake courtesy of Mr. Green. It's always great singing together with ya, George! We look forward to singing more songs with you in 2024 =)
No Practice at the Hall (August 29th)
Posted On: Aug 22, 2023

Please note that we will not be holding practices on August 29th.

Our chorus will be reconvening at the hall on September 5th.

Inter-Chapter Practice with the Scarborough Dukes of Harmony
Posted On: Jun 19, 2023
The power of in-person interactions was on full display when the East York Barbershoppers and the Scarborough Dukes of Harmony got together for a group practice session this Monday. It was great to see friends again, but even better to be able to sing together once more.

Performing for each other, and performing together under the direction of Pat and Jordan really energized the group throughout the night. We performed some tags, sang some polecats together, and even had performances from quartets in both groups.

The night wrapped up with some popcorn and refreshments, and lots of chatting and catching up. What an incredible evening!
Great UofT Article about H4S
Posted On: Mar 23, 2023

Harmonize for Speech (and East York Members and H4S Board Members George Shields and Rick Snoulten) were recognized in this great article in UofT's Temerty School of Medicine article.  Enjoy!

https://temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/harmonize-for-speech

EYBS Holiday Party 2022
Posted On: Dec 10, 2022

Sing out at the Sumach!
Posted On: Sep 21, 2022

The East York Barbershoppers are finally singing for a live audience once more! Everyone in the chorus is excited and grateful for our first public performance since the pandemic.

After years of dealing with lockdowns, with quarantine isolations, with an underlying sense of unease... It's so great to be able to bring joy and smiles to people's faces in these trying times.

Many thanks to the kind folks at the Sumach for hosting us and our friends. We were joined by a couple of quartets: Three Notes and a Rest and Constructive Criticism, and boy did they put out some banger performances.

All in all, we had a fantastic time, and here's to more performances in the future!

Barbershopper of the Year
Posted On: Jan 18, 2022

In a year somewhat lacking in bright spots, there was one that shone through in the form of our Chapter Secretary, Michael Derblich.

Mike never seems to lose his cheery disposition, and his wry sense of humour is very welcome at our meetings. As Secretary his duties never ease up, whether we’re meeting virtually, in cars or in person. He even makes it pleasant to be chased down for our dues and takes the time to prepare a personalized presentation when he delivers our membership cards. In addition to those duties, he selflessly lends his creativity and artistic skills to the graphics for any project that comes along.

It was a pleasure to see that the membership noticed his ongoing and important contributions and voted to honour him with the Barbershopper of the Year for 2021 award.

A CARvellous Evening
Posted On: Jul 6, 2021

Photo - Barry Tripp

After 16 months away from being able to sing together, East York Barbershoppers finally got to ring chords together on July 6. While COVID-19 regulations wouldn’t allow us back in our regular rehearsal space, thanks to the hard work and technical prowess of Michael Green and Barry Tripp, we were able to enter the world of what we affectionately call Carbershop – singing barbershop in our cars.

Though we haven’t been singing together since March 2019, we have been getting together and singing via Zoom when it became apparent that the shutdown was going to be a long-term reality. Zoom rehearsals gave us the opportunity to keep in touch with one another and keep our voices in shape, but its technical limitations wouldn’t allow us to hear how we actually sounded together.

Carbershop remedied this by getting rid of the lag that various hops between internet servers introduce while allowing us to maintain social distancing. We gathered in our hall’s parking lot and plugged microphones into our new mixing board. No Bluetooth. No WiFi. Actual physical cables. The mixed signal was broadcast by a small FM transmitter which we tuned to on our car radios or on FM headsets. Any delay was small enough to be imperceptible. And because we were listening to a mixed signal, we may even have heard the other voice parts better than we normally do.

As hard as the singing drought was on the membership, it was torture for our director who had to completely rework his instruction methods without the benefit of being able to hear the results. So it was only fitting that our first Carbershop session took place on Pat Hannon’s birthday. In his words, “Best birthday present, ever!” And everyone who attended enjoyed it as much as he did.

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