The Rexburg Barbershop Festival is this weekend, with clinics for high school quartets and concerts for the community.
For nearly 30 years, the Rexburg Barbershop Festival has given high school vocal quartets from nearby schools the opportunity to hear and learn from some of the best barbershop groups in the nation.
Thomas Scott is a local event host and musician who first participated in the Rexburg Barbershop Festival in 2009.
“When I came up here to school in 2009, I decided to come and do the festival,” Scott said. “It struck me very hard. It really changed the way that I saw music.”
Since 2021 Scott has been the chairman of the festival. With the impact it has had on his life, Scott wants to make sure the festival persists to have that effect on future students.
The headline quartet for this year’s festival is Sunday Night Social. They are the number one quartet in the Intermountain West, and placed number six worldwide in an international competition.
Student quartets will have a Q&A session with Sunday Night Social, and some will be able to work one-on-one with the group.
“We bus everybody in, we have an incredible day of learning,” Scott said. “We teach these massive choruses and some of them are coming from very small schools. So, they have this incredible opportunity to sing with larger schools.”
The festival also gives local residents the opportunity to hear from quartets in concert. Saturday night is the community concert where local groups, along with Sunday Night Social, will perform.
“Every time that someone goes and sees what people can do with their voices in four-part harmony it just gives them a different depth of understanding of what the human voice can do,” Scott said. “You will leave just emotional and in awe of the talent that we have coming in.”
The High School concert is Friday at 7 p.m. at the Madison Performing Arts Center, and the community concert will be Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Romance Theater in Rexburg. You can purchase tickets and find more information on Scott’s website here.