The Men in BAC
This month’s featured BACman wasn’t a class clown, but he was a circus arts teacher. How handy is that when you are staging a musical production of the song “Make ‘em Laugh?” We stopped by the confetti cannon to question Brad Verebay…it was no laughing matter.
Q:
Clowning around comes pretty naturally to you. I understand you apprenticed
and performed circus routines as a kid and you went on to teach circus-craft
to other young people?
BV: In 1984, at 11 years old, I was a camper at French Woods
Festival of the Performing Arts summer camp. It was a magical place. I learned
to juggle, ride a unicycle and walk on a giant ball. Two years later a new
and improved circus program came to camp and the real circus training began.
Bruce Pfeffer, owner of Circus of the Kids brought trapezes, a high wire,
trained dogs, fire eating, trick roller-skating and much much more. I was
insatiably hooked.
For the next four summers I worked hard to learn everything I could. When
I left French Woods, I took school breaks to work for the circus on the road.
They did school programs with the students, culminating in a fantastic show
that always made the news. I last worked on the road in 1999 when I started
my tour in St. Louis and ended in Mississippi, hitting a half-dozen states
along the way.
Q: The flame still seems to be there. Do you miss the circus?
BV: It definitely takes something to be able to live that life. Ultimately the lifestyle wasn’t for me, but I’m still very closely related to it and keep some of my more useful skills polished.
There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you have a team aligned on a goal. I try to use the skills I have gained from working with the children in the circus and apply it to working with my family in the BAC. The atmosphere is surprisingly very similar.
Q: Where do you actually get to apply that in the Big Apple
Chorus?
BV: My roles are: VP of Chapter Development, VP of Technology: learning CD recording engineering, CD and MP3 distribution, music-audition team member, website designer/host-master, holiday CD marketing, copyright clearance, chorus property manager and storage closet manager.
Q: But what about the stuff you learned from your circus experience?
BV: Unicyclist, juggler, confetti cannon operator. It’s also a willingness to put myself out there in any kind of situation without being limited by fear. I love making people laugh. I look at it like a bag of tricks, which I amassed, back in the day, I can pull from now. The circus allows you to do just, anything.
Q: Like pulling a rubber chicken from the pants of your chorus director?
BV:
He is infinitely a team player. I don’t find that he’s closed
to anything. Very rarely do I interact with people who are closed. In that
way Joe [Big Apple Chorus Director] and I really aligned well. Our free associations
sessions can go way out into space and then we rein it back based on what’s
feasible. I would love to get the front row eating fire, on stage, one day!
I claim no responsibility for the chicken.
Q: What’s the draw for you?
BV: I like being a part of a group where my skills are well utilized.
I like teams and working toward a goal. I’m proud of this group. I really
love the family aspect. People who are too individualistic are hard to relate
to. The best part is in the playing with my friends. I don’t know if it’s
the Gemini in me or the performer-jokester that is in need of constant attention.
Q: What’s your music background?
BV: My dad was a printer mainly for the music industry.
We had a rather large LP collection. No classical. We listened to Neil Diamond,
Bob Marley, Barbra Streisand, Woodie Guthrie, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, a wide spectrum
of popular music. My mom was the one who fostered our interests and talents.
She was a powerhouse when it came to exposing me and my younger sister Amy
to every opportunity to pursue our creativity.
I started
taking private piano lessons, like my dad, when I was 5. I also took group
folk-guitar lessons. I never really liked practicing exactly what the teachers
gave me. I kept playing piano anyway until my mother found me this eccentric
Jazz musician who I just fell in love with. I started playing with him when
I was 9 or 10 years old. Arthur Cunningham, I took lessons with him, on and
off, for probably 10 years. He made me laugh, told me I was white and showed
me the difference between playing from a sheet and just closing your eyes,
and not being afraid of making mistakes.
I
still play every day.
Q: How did you discover barbershop singing?
BV: I was listening to The Beatles and Queen as a little kid. The movie Charlotte’s Web had a quartet in it and I loved the sound of that. Harmony has always been in my head. I could always hear the 3rds and the 4ths above the melody. In high school I sang in a mixed choir. In 1989 my girlfriend at the time found an ad in the paper in my town that read “Harmony Singers Wanted”. Knowing that I couldn’t stop myself from harmonizing to everything on the radio, she showed it to me and the rest is history. This year I got my 15 year membership card. I guess I really like it. Or I’m just a “culty”.
Q:
What’s your take on quarteting?
BV: It’s the reason I’m still in this. I believe the chorus is essential in order to get your chops up, but anyone really serious about four part barbershop harmony finds no greater joy than the quartet.
Q: You live in the Lower East Side, a pretty hip place in town these days. Do you see any prospects for barbershop in that funky cultural mix?
BV: Sure. Absolutely. I’m not sure the straw hats would fly, but some off beat stuff with a dark and dirty flair would go over quite well. Of course there’s the heckling, but that comes with the territory.
Brad’s
been a member of the Big Apple Chorus since 1995 and is a member of the Indiana
Harmony Brigade. He’s been in several quartets, including district level
quartet, Greenwich Av. He was a member of the “Blue Amberol Quartette”
for Stomp Off Records on Dan Levinson and His Canary Cottage Dance Orchestra CD, called, “Crinoline Days.” He is a technology consultant and
freelances as a specialty recording engineer. He’s asked us to let all the women
out there know he’s available. He’s not clowning around about that!
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| Steve Adams | Dan George | Gabe Butler | Glynn Fluitt | Jim and Michael Steiner |
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| Scott Brannon | Gary Ford | Brad Verebay | Vinny Haynes | Frank Hendricks | The Patricias |
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| Bob Kovach | Joe Husstege | Gordon Harrison | Roger Payne | Dick White |
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| John Gouveia | Pat Kelly |