The Ontario Music Educators Association (OMEA) held their annual conference in Toronto in early November, and the barbershop artform was on full display. The event, which welcomed 700-1000 music educators and music education students, helped celebrate OMEA’s 100th anniversary as an organization.
The Ontario District sponsored the exhibit booth and an ad in the program, as well as providing coordination for the different barbershop groups who represented at the conference. District members Fraser Baguma, Lee Sperry, Patrick Brown, Robert Ross, Dan Austin, Andrew Carolan, and Chris Tanaka-Mann made a big impact on the success of the event by staffing the exhibit booth, sharing educator resources, and singing tags with attendees. “We had some really interesting conversations with local educators,” says exhibit booth volunteer Andrew Carolan. “This is just the beginning,” he added.
The Toronto Northern Lights provided a quartet demonstration in the exhibit plaza on the Friday morning of the event, and the entire chorus received a standing ovation for a three-song performance that evening for hundreds of music educators.
The Barbershop Harmony Society itself was well represented by their Advertising Campaign Manager Chris Bernstein, who attended the conference and helped in staffing the exhibit booth. Building on the best practices learned through their outreach with organizations such as the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) and the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), the Barbershop Harmony Society materials provided at the booth highlighted key programs of interest to music educators, such as youth camps, workshops, and festivals, Harmony University, and the Society’s Music Education Partner program.
With the success of this year’s event, district leadership hope to make barbershop a bigger and more regular presence at the conference