Cranberry Men’s Chorus back after 4-year hiatus
Cranberry Men’s Chorus is coming back singing.
The group will present its first concert since 2019 at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23.
“It starts at 7 p.m., but we’re saying 6:59 p.m., because you do not want to be late for the first song,” organizer Ron Brooks said. “We’ve got a surprise coming. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but no one has ever seen us like this.”
The concert will be held at North Catholic High School, 1617 Route 228 in Cranberry Township, for a night the group is calling “Flashback Soundtrack.”
“We actually changed our repertoire since the pandemic, and it’s really cool,” Brook said. “We’ve gone from the really old stuff from the early 1900s to now we’re doing stuff from the ‘50s through the ‘90s.”
All of the music will be sung a capella in four-part harmony, according to Brooks, with much of the music being near and dear to the performers’ hearts.
“It’s really cool stuff — it’s stuff from the Monkees, the Beach Boys, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka,” he said. “All kinds of fun songs that I think people are going to just love.”
In addition to the men’s chorus, the evening will feature special guests the Fabulous Gemtones — a Pittsburgh-based show band — and a choreographed dance by the Siri Dance Studio in Harmony.
“They’re Seneca Valley and Lincoln Park students, so I pulled them in and they’re going to be doing a dance,” Brooks said. “We’ve given them a recording of our song, which is a Frankie Valli song, and their instructor has created a dance for it.”
Mars Boy Scout Troop 400 will also present the colors at the end of the show, according to Brooks, during a rendition of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.”
“We’ve got a lot of surprises during the show, and that’s even before the Fabulous Gemtones come on,” Brooks said. “And then there’s a big finale. The crowd is going to go crazy.”
With the pandemic being a “no-go” for the chorus’ yearly spring performances, Brooks said they waited until this fall to get "back on a big stage.“
“We took 2020, 2021 and 2022 off, and we usually do a spring show, but we decided to do a fall show,” he said. “This has really come together; we’re really excited about it.”
And while this won’t be the groups’ first time singing these songs in public, according to Brooks, it will be their first concert with the new repertoire.
“Whenever we sing these songs — I mean, we go to the Mingles on Main in Saxonburg and sing — people are just enamored,” he said. “They gather around and they start singing along. It’s just a completely different creature.”
But its not just the audience that is enamored with the music, Brooks said, with the performers taking their own delight in previewing the music earlier this year.
“We were singing at a women’s conference at the Cranberry Marriott just this spring, and at one point, they all had their phones in the air,” he said. “It was crazy, you felt like you were at a real concert.”
Brooks said the evening will also feature chapter quartets from the chorus singing break-out songs — with two of the quartets featuring his son, David.
David, a 2017 Knoch graduate, has been singing with the Cranberry Men’s Chorus since 2015, but he said he and a group of friends formed their first quartet — In a Chord — during the pandemic.
“It’s a great hobby, and because it’s a capella there’s no need for any experience or anything like that,” David said. “And as long as you have four guys, you can sing a song, which I think is quite accessible as a hobby.”
In addition to performing with In a Chord, David said he will perform as part of a second quartet — Trouble Clef — that he helped form last winter.
“I think the quality of the singing that we’re performing is higher than it’s ever been,” he said. “I’m really proud to be a part of the organization as a whole, and I hope that everyone comes out to the show on Sept. 23.”
This story was updated at 2:39 p.m., Sept. 21 to reflect the appropriate school districts for the dancers. A previous version of this story said both dancers were students in the Seneca Valley School District.
Want to attend?
The Cranberry Men’s Chorus will present “Flashback Soundtrack” at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23.
The concert will be held at North Catholic High School, 1617 Route 228 in Cranberry Township.
Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for students age 18 and young. Tickets can be purchased at the door or by calling (724) 630-8137.
