I just read Charlotte Hagemeister’s obituary today. She passed away the day before yesterday at the age of 101. What a doll this woman was. So who’s Charlotte Hagemeister?

We do a lot of performing in the area. We sing for banquets, concerts, holiday parties, singing telegrams, you name it. And as a result, the guys and I receive a lot of nice comments from folks about how special the occasion was and how our singing touched their lives. It’s great stuff and we certainly feed off of that.

And then there are women like Charlotte. Her family hired us to sing at her 100th birthday party on Sunday, October 23, 2004. When we knocked on the front door of her old house near Heritage Hill, we were greeted by one of dozens of family members there. And by opening their door, they also opened their arms and their hearts.

We sang for Charlotte and for all her children and grandchildren, and her face lit up. She had been blind for some time, but that just seems to have heightened her sense of hearing, and we could tell by looking at her that she could “see” us in her mind.

The guys and I talk about her from time to time. We recall the stories she told us about the old Hagemeister Field, where the Packers used to play. And the room in her house that was decorated to look like a cabin room on a boat; it was pretty cool. She told us of her music studies at Lawrence University, and it was like rubbing elbows with a fellow musician. And of course at a gathering like this, they didn’t let us leave without eating.

We were only booked to be there for about 10 minutes or so, but it was more like an hour. And in that hour, Charlotte managed to touch our hearts, and teach us have a great appreciation for the simple things in life.

As a quartet, we don’t often get the chance to have an afternoon like this; but this is definitely one day and one special woman that we’ll remember forever.

At the end of rehearsal last night, Scott told us he had this great word document he want to share, being stored on his new 1GB memory stick (all the more reason he has a lock on the historian/librarian/geek of the year award). So Brian brings up the document on his laptop and the laughs ensued. Do a search sometime on Google on the following name phrase and you’ll understand. Say it fast and without thinking too hard and you might surprise yourself!

Makollig Jezvahted and Levdaroum DeBahzted

It’s pretty hard to describe what happens at a GQ4 rehearsal. Most of it, taken out of context means absolutely nothing and makes little sense. But when GQ4 gets together, in the context of songs and our particular mood for the evening, let’s say anything can happen.

Anyway, Scott was apparently making a mouth-shape that wasn’t quite right for the sound we were going for. Kelly, being “the ear” and “the eyes”, noticed what Scott was doing and asked, “how do you sing with that face?”

Without needing to hear Scott sing, you too might wonder how he sings with that face!

We continued singing and tried wrapping up with “Thank You Dear Lord for Music”. It’s such a nice song, with cool chords and “rings” as only barbershop can. Well, we could tell it was getting late.

Mc Creamy started singing, then phonetically clustered some sounds together that sounded like, well, if you can imagine a bagpipe that produces vocalizations, you’ve got a pretty good idea. It was only a couple word sounds, but after 2-3/4 hours of being together, this was enough for us to enter a state of sillyness that we usually cannot escape. We know! We’ve been to this state quite often!

We sort of regained our composure and got started again, sounding pretty good, all things considered… then for some reason Scott and Chris looked at each other - right at the end of the song, too! Let’s just say it didn’t end well. It was definitely funny, as when Scott loses it, it’s usually enough to take 1 or 2 of us with him.

I looked over and said, “I guess you can’t sing with that face.”

Well, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it

Brian - Tenor - GQ4

what a great time we had singing for the people at the Meyer Theatre. Singing before in the theatre and the balcony and after in the lobby was awesome. The patrons for this once a month free show given by the Allouez Village Band were treated to a wide variety of entertainment from the MC to the radio announcer to the Andrew Sisters, Abbott and Costello, the band, and our barbershop songs.

lookin forward to our next outing and ringing more chords for our enjoyment and maybe yours!

kelly

We had some fun at Marquette University tonight. We’ve actually made the drive down to Milwaukee a number of times to sing the national anthem for the Bucks, Brewers, Admirals and Marquette basketball. But this was the first time we sang for the Marquette women’s basketball game at the Al McGuire Center. The game was great, with Marquette beating Cincinnati 66-48.
Since we were right there on campus, Chris showed us around his old stomping grounds after the game. The coolest building we encountered was the Gesu Church. Unfortunately, it was locked; we had hoped that maybe we could go inside to ring a chord or two. But we settled for the steps out front. This church is a beautiful building that’s been around for 112 years!

Marquette is a 125-year-old school supported by the Jesuit order of Catholic priests. The Gesu Church was named in 1893 for the church in Rome where St. Ignatius (founder of the Jesuit order) is buried. All four of us were in awe of the steeples, the stone walls and the overall beauty of the building. Singing The Lord’s Prayer right there at this house of God was very moving. I hope we get back there sometime soon, at at time when we can see what it looks like inside.

Holy cow! What a blast! We’ve been delivering Singing Valentines for years, and this year was no exception. We all burned a vacation day at work on Tuesday, and met at Chris’ house at 7:15am to get the day going.

We met with the other quartets at a restaurant to pick up our cards and roses and balloons, and off we went. First Appleton, then Neenah, over to Menasha, north to De Pere, back down to Appleton, and back north to Lambeau Field for our final Valentine of the day at 7:30pm. All told, we delivered 17 Singing Valentines.

The most fun visit had to be at Howe Elementary school, in downtown Green Bay. We sang for one of the teachers in front of a combined class with about 80 kids. Strange thing was that they were about to watch the movie, “March of the Penguins”, then four guys in tuxedos walked in. As we sang, the teacher had tears in her eyes. And when we were done, we took a photo of us with the teacher and all 80 kids. They were pretty excited, what a blast!

Can’t wait to do it again next year.

If you wanna feel those good vibrations comin’ from the joy that His love will bring, get in touch with God.

Yep, we’re learning a new song. Turn Your Radio On is a peppy gospel song that Kelly brought in. He knows it pretty well, so Brian and Chris and I are trying to catch up. It’s 72 measures, so it’s not too bad.

When I need to get up to speed quick on a song, I like to notate the sheet music on my computer. Then I can selectively play any or all of the four voice parts and rehearse it on my own time without the other guys around. I use Print Music for notation; it works very nicely for barbershop arrangements. Brian then takes the notated document and creates MP3s to help him rehearse. You know, we’re an old fashioned quartet…I’m sure this is how they did it 50 years ago.

We plan to debut the song at the Meyer Theatre on Feb 20 when we perform at the Allouez Village Band’s monthly concert.

It was only a matter of time before our webmaster (also our bari) added a new dimension…blogging…cool! I hope we can share some interesting things that might give you a “insider’s view” about our quartet. We have an absolute blast singing together and have had some pretty out of the ordinary things happen when we perform. I look forward to sharing some of those with you soon. Way to go Scott!

Chris, Lead of GQ4

Welcome! and Thank You for reading my first GQ4 Blog entry.

First off, I have to say “YOU ARE AWESOME” to Scott for all the neat stuff he does with the web site for GQ4.

Coming soon is the GQ4 Podcast. WooHoo! That should be a LOT of fun.

Once I get it together - I’m the audio recorder - there will be some great harmonies, maybe some clunkers, and probably some pretty funny stuff.

Join us on our journey and hear what happens at a GQ4 rehearsal. Watch for it!

Thanks again!

Take Care and God Bless.

Brian - GQ4 Tenor

We sing the national anthem at a lot of local sporting events. Last Saturday, we performed at the hockey game between St. Norbert College and Hamline University. It was our 32nd anthem performance (since 2000), and our 9th since Kelly joined us in August. We’ve only done St. Norbert College a few times, and it’s always special for a couple of reasons.

First, I work at St. Norbert, so it’s cool to see a bunch of folks that I know. More importantly though, it’s the only game we do where we also sing “O Canada“. At first this seems strange, because neither team is from Canada. However, of the 28 guys on St. Norbert’s hockey team this season, 20 are from Canada!

“O Canada” is a beautiful song, and our arrangement has some great harmonies. This year, we added some French lyrics (in place of a couple of English phrases) and we got a lot of nice comments about it.
St. Norbert College is ranked #2 in the nation right now in Division III hockey, and their games always provide some good, hard-hitting action. I look forward to doing it again soon.