The Barbershop Festival on Saturday featured BYU-Idaho students, staff, community groups and internationally renowned singers alike.
Kim Newcomb is part of an internationally acclaimed barbershop quartet, The Ladies. She is one of the two barbershop clinicians that come to Rexburg each year to coach students and locals.
“Barbershop is one of the few places where you have a lifelong music learning opportunity,” Newcomb said. “I think my favorite part of the evening was teaching the audience, because it got everyone involved in front of me and I had the women’s chorus behind me, so I was just surrounded by sound. I had the best seat in the house.”
The Ricks brothers started the barbershop festival in 1999 and have been a mainstay at BYU-I each year since.
“Barbershop is different from your normal choir stuff — it’s a little more loose,” said Brigham Rasmussen, a member of the men’s choir and a freshman studying welding engineering. “You can do anything you want.”
The festival exhibited a wide variety of songs ranging from classic hits to movie favorites like “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and “The Bear Necessities.”
The evening closed with a standing ovation from the audience.
“The barbershop tagline that so many people say is that ‘we come for the music but we stay for the people,’” Newcomb said. “Barbershoppers really show up and put people first.”
To find out more about upcoming events like this one, visit the BYU-I ticket office.