Friday, 31st October (Quartet comp)

What a day! Last night Jo and Deborah went back to Ruby Tuesday for dinner and met up with Linda and Kerry. We realised around 9:45 pm that we were the last people in the restaurant and the staff were sweeping up, so went back to our room for a cup of Aussie tea and to show Kerry and Linda our shopping spoils. To bed around 11 pm, and (after they commented what hard beds we had compared with theirs) a restless night.

We were up at 7 am and caught the shuttle bus at 7:30 am to the Hawaii Theatre for the quartet comp. The guys on the bus sang "Irish Rose" - a lovely start to the day. We carried souvenir koalas with us and gave them out freely in return for support for our Aussies. We had breakfast in a cafe in the mall near the Hawaii Theatre with a couple of nice NZ barbershoppers, and Jo had her photo taken with a lovely Hawaiian policeman, and with a security guard called "Junior".

In the theatre (gorgeous, recently refurbished with lots of gilding) we were sitting with Kerry and Linda. Jo gave another koala to the organist who was entertaining the audience until the contest started, and swopped a koala with a lovely lady from Alaska in return for two Alaskan pins (good exchange rate!).

The show started with everyone singing Aloha (but it sounded like not many of the audience - certainly not us - had learned it). The MC was Ian Miller, an Australian (?) barbershopper, who filled in the pauses between contestants with a series of jokes, some of which we might quote if we can remember them. We're not going to describe every quartet, just the ones that made a big impression on us.

Pacific Flavours were the young New Zealanders we met on the plane. They had great dynamics and expressive faces (in fact that was true of all the young NZ quartets), and they got through to the finals.

There were several quartets from Japan. Happy Coats wore blue happy jackets and what looked like black jeans, and had a lot of fun with choreo - they were entertaining to watch but didn't get to the finals. We thought all the Japanese quartets would be great to go to a karaoke bar with because they so obviously loved singing and entertaining. It was interesting that their leads stood out, and the other parts seemed to be backing them.

High Fidelity from US did a brilliant barbershop parody of Bye Bye Blackbird based around not being able to agree on what key to sing in, so kept switching between keys - brought it off beautifully and got a standing ovation. They are in the finals.

Eight Feet Under were the funniest quartet. They came on as doddery old men with walking sticks, caps and suits, and went to sleep in the middle of My Old Kentucky Home. In Hello Mary Lou one of them had a heart attack, the others brought out stethoscope, blood pressure monitor and first aid book and resuscitated him (complete with zapper and sparks to restart heart beat) so he could sing the tag, and then dragged him out after he died again. As well as all this, they could sing and they're also in the finals.

After the quartets finished their comp, the mixed quartets followed straight on with the same judging panel and Double Shot were first up. They did their usual beautiful performance, and looked and sounded great. The announcements about Senior Quartet Champion, Novice Quartet Champion and Mixed Harmony Champion aren't made until tomorrow, and we didn't see Double Shot after the comp, so we didn't know until we read James' email that they had won Gold in their category. YEAH! We think they were ahead of the other two competitors because they sang true barbershop.

We have to admit, though, that the two women in Ready Willing and Mabel (from Los Angeles) had great voices.

The ten quartets in the finals are:
1. Lipservice
2. High Fidelity
3. Fusion
4. Benchmark
5. Vintage Gold
6. Soap
7. Over the Edge
8. Pacific Trades
9. Pacific Flavours
10. 8 Feet Under.

Chorus comp is from 9 am to 1 pm on Saturday, then Quartet finals are from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm, then the Show of Champions is 8:55 pm to 10 pm - and then there's afterglow from 11 pm to 1 am but we doubt we'll stay up that late. It's going to be a big day.

We had dinner at Ruby Tuesdays for the third time, this time with Heino and Liz, and we all had cocktails (though Deborah had to finish Jo's grape martini for her). Ala Moana Mall was full of kids in halloween costume trick and treating around the shops for candy - it's a big deal here - and we loved seeing all the costumes. Every shop was handing out candy. Even adults in the mall during the day were in full costume. Jo has taken photos of some of them, including a tidy baby in pink and green tulle. We finished the night with Liz doing show and tell shopping again while Heino was at Sydney Harmony's rehearsal.

Can't wait to hear them perform tomorrow. We'll keep you posted on results when we get back from the chorus comp tomorrow afternoon.