Note: Feb. 8 concert moved Feb. 22.

Maine-ly Harmony and the Back Bay Four will present a program called “Sing a Cappella” at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 8. Maine-ly Harmony is a barbershop chorus from a fairly large geographical area made up of a very diverse group of women that includes retirees, lawyers and teachers. The Back Bay Four is a men’s barbershop quartet formed in 2001 with more than 60 collective years of barbershop harmony behind them. A a wonderful afternoon of high-quality vocals await. I placed a call to Kathy Greason to find out more about this show.

Q: Could you give me an overview of what will be happening at Jewett Auditorium with the show you’ll be bringing there?

Greason: We are doing a concert of music arranged in the barbershop style with another barbershop group of men’s quartet … that’s it.

Q: Have you folks performed at Jewett before?

Greason: We have. This is our second concert with this series … I think we participated in the series three years ago.

Q: Now you’re the director of Maine-ly Harmony?

Greason: I am … the chorus has a number of quartets , active and inactive, sort of subgroups of the chorus — that will be performing at this show.

Q: How do you put together a program for a performance like this — what do you draw upon?

Greason: Well, we have an active repertoire of about maybe 25 songs in the non-Christmas season — it’s a little different in the Christmas season — and we will pick maybe 16 or 18 songs and work on them for the next four weeks at our rehearsals (this interview was conducted on Jan. 6) and then they will be polished and ready for performance on the 8th of February … at least, that is our hope.

Q: How do you go about choosing material to perform with your group — are the songs old standards, are they newer material that someone arranges for you?

Greason: Well, they’re a variety — the songs that we plan to perform are as old as 1918. We are going to sing an America medley that will include “God Bless America” from 1918 and there’s “After You’ve Gone” which is also from 1918, so those are out oldest songs. A lot of the songs are from the 30s … I think our newest song is from 1987. But what they have in common is that they’ve all been arranged in this four-part vocal harmony in the barbershop style with the melody in the middle of chords (as opposed to) the glee club style where the melody is on top of the chords.

Q: I’ve never sang barbershop but I spent many years in a church choir — I love the four-part harmony of hymns. I think that’s the best example of four-part harmony there is.

Greason: Well, good four-part harmony does come in hymns, that’s true, and we have a couple of gospel numbers that we’ll do, but again they’ll be in the barbershop style.

Q: Now, do you do any arrangements yourself?

Greason: I am a very novice arranger so I do them but with assistance — I arranged the “State of Maine” song that we sing for our chorus — but there’s a lot to arranging and getting it right. There’s a lot to be sure that the music that you’re arranging is available or else you have to pay the copyright fee to be able to arrange it. So I have arranged few numbers for the chorus but by and large we rely on arrangers from throughout the country who have been doing it for more years and have, frankly, more musical background than I have.

Q: Now, for an all-women’s barbershop chorus what is the vocal breakdown.

Greason: Well, we sing all-women’s barbershop music just the way men sing all-men’s barbershop music … although we take our vocal parts from the men’s names — we call ourselves tenors, leads, baritones and basses — we’re singing in a woman’s range.

Q: Oh, so it would be like sopranos, mezzo sopranos, altos…

Greason: Yes, like first and second alto, first and second soprano, where the men are singing first and second tenor and first and second baritone … more or less.

Q: Do the Back Bay Four and Maine-ly Harmony ever sing together?

Greason: I don’t think we will … the program isn’t completely set. Sometimes we do get together for a finale piece but because our ranges are about half-an-octave differing, it’s hard for us to do a song together unless it’s been specifically arranged with that in mind.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to pass on to the readers of this article concerning this show at Jewett on Feb. 8?

Greason: Come.

Lucky Clark has spent over 45 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.