A singer with Sonoran Sound, a Tucson barbershop quartet, hit a high note in his musical career this month.
Oro Valley resident Conrad "Connie" Keil is now a member of the Barbershop Harmony Society board of directors.
He will be formally installed on the board this week at the society's Midwinter Convention, held this year in San Antonio, Texas.
The Barbershop Harmony Society is a Nashville, Tenn.-based all-male singing society with about 30,000 members in the United States and Canada, according to the society's Web site, www.barbershop.org. It has affiliate organizations in other countries.
Its board meets four times a year and sets the policy, aims and intent of the society and oversees the strategic plan, said Keil, who joined the society in 1957. He will serve a three-year term.
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Keil, 72, was nominated to the board by a committee of five people, one of whom was Roger Lewis of Michigan.
He put Keil's name in front of the nominating committee, after getting to know the Oro Valley singer while judging together at competitions.
"He had the kind of intelligence, thinking, business background and leadership that I felt made him a good candidate for the board," Lewis said.
Lewis, 70, of Battle Creek, Mich., was the society's president in 2002 and 2003.
As judges, he and Keil worked together to give competitors evaluations of their performances and tips on how they could improve.
"He's very musically knowledgeable, and he knows how to work with people to get the best of them," Lewis said, referring to Keil. "I've seen firsthand what he does and how he works with people."
Keil's barbershop career began when he was a junior in college at the University of Oklahoma.
Since then, he's kept busy as both a barbershop singer and a coach, as well as working in his main career.
An engineer by training, he was senior vice president of global operations for Color-con, a company of Berwind Pharmaceutical Services Inc. He now works as an independent consultant.
Keil brings his musical know-how and his experience as a judge and coach to Sonoran Sound.
Having a member who is also a competition judge helps the quartet know what's important when it competes in contests and performs in general, said Keith Brunson, Sonoran Sound's newest singer.
The members of the quartet have varied backgrounds. Brunson, 47, is a juvenile probation officer.
Paul Sheppard, 48, is a professor of tree-ring science at the University of Arizona. Gil Storms, 65, is a retired English professor from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
"This guy lives barbershop," Sheppard said, referring to Keil.
Keil is the only Sonoran Sound member who lives in Oro Valley; the others live in Tucson.
Sonoran Sound works with children in Southern Arizona, doing workshops for schools.
The group participated as a teaching quartet Sept. 8 at the second annual Youth in Harmony Festival, at Rincon/ University High School, 421 N. Arcadia Ave.
The quartet performs in venues throughout the year, most recently at the 2008 Glassman Foundation Family Arts Festival, held Jan. 13 Downtown.
Sonoran Sound's performance schedule and song list are available on its Web site, www.sonoransoundquartet. com.
Central and Northwest
What is a barbershop quartet?
Barbershop quartets sing a cappella in four-part harmony. Here's how Sonoran Sound — the Tucson barbershop quartet that Conrad "Connie" Keil belongs to — is structured:
• Keith Brunson — sings lead, usually singing the melody.
• Keil — sings tenor, above the melody.
• Gil Storms — sings baritone — sometimes above, sometimes below the melody.
• Paul Sheppard — sings bass, the lowest part.
Together, their four voices create a four-part musical chord.
Source: Sonoran Sound.
For more information, check out the following Web pages:
Sonoran Sound (includes a link to listen to a sample of the quartet's music online): www.sonoransoundquartet.com.
Barbershop Harmony Society: www.barbershop.org.
Tucson Sunshine Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society: www.spebsqsafwd.org/tsc.
