A brief history

Our chorus was first formed in 1987, was known as Keyne Harmony, and consisted of 8 or 9 people. We rehearsed then as we do now, once a week, but in those days we rehearsed in a member's home.

In 1989 the chorus became a member of the Ladies’ Association of British Barbershop Singers (LABBS) and by then had grown to approximately 20 members. It was about that time that we started entering competitions and going out to sing for various groups and organisations, and at private functions.

In 1996 we changed our name to Junction 14 and updated our club image. Hannah Washington has been our Musical Director (MD) since 2008.

Our Aims  

Junction 14's main purpose is to promote the singing of songs in barbershop style, which is four-part close harmony, sung without any accompaniment. The voices provide the texture of the music.

The four parts of barbershop harmony are lead (usually the melody line), bass, baritone (known as 'bari') and tenor.

However, our aims are much broader than merely singing, regardless of how technically challenging it may be. We have defined our aims as "the four Es"

* Enjoy
* Entertain
* Educate
* Enter

Enjoy

This really speaks for itself. Junction 14 exists primarily so that we can enjoy ourselves doing what we like to do - singing. Without enjoyment there would be little point in any of it.

Entertain

We sing on request to many organisations, both to entertain and to raise money for various charities. We nominate a charity each year, and try to arrange special charity events.

Educate

As well as enjoying ourselves and entertaining others, we like to think that we can improve our technique. To that end, we try to arrange special education days or evenings at various times throughout the year. We have training in sound (to improve the noise we make), presentation ( to improve our moves and the general way that we present ourselves), breath control (which again helps our sound), and voice production, and we hope to arrange many other such sessions. These sessions are often fronted by experts. We have always found them most enjoyable as well as educational.

Enter

LABBS holds an annual national competition, known as Convention. To qualify for Convention, regional preliminary competitions are held (rather like heats) in which the highest scoring choruses go through to Convention, which is the final competition.

 We also enter local Music Festivals and competitions.
So another of our aims is to enter competitions of this nature, mainly because we enjoy it, but also because we feel that the experience is good for us and teaches us skills that we probably could not pick up in any other way