Last Saturday was April Fool’s Day, and the West Central Connection Chorus made that the theme of its annual spring concert, “No Foolin’!” It had been a few months since Ross had gone to his chorus’ rehearsals on Monday nights, and he came back just in time to compete in a chorus contest the previous Saturday and to get ready for the spring show. Besides the chorus, the concert featured Willmar’s local quartet, Sound Image, Kordal Kombat, another quartet, and the 2016 International Barbershop Quartet champions ForeFront.

Ross and I tend to make a day of it when it’s spring concert time. There’s two shows, at 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Willmar Education and Arts Center. I’m asked to be an usher, something I’ve done for the last 8 or 9 years. I’ve gotten to know that building pretty well. We do a little shopping and then lunch at a Chinese buffet and then to the WEAC by 2 p.m. I had two hours to kill before the first concert, so I was up in the balcony for a while reading a manga and listening to the chorus warm up. People come early for these particular concerts, so I left my perch a little before 3 p.m. And there was already a couple coming into the auditorium. Luckily sound check was almost done. Time flew by quickly as I’m handing out programs, telling people to hold onto their tickets (the chorus does a drawing for free tickets to the next year’s show) and letting people know where the restrooms were. Little did I know that I’d be doing this again for the 7:30 p.m. show.

The chorus sounded great as it performed a few familiar songs, like “The Longest Time” by Billy Joel and “Friends” by Michael W. Smith. It also did a Mills Brothers medley.

After intermission, Sound Image took the stage. Three members of the quartet have been together for quite a few years and there’s a new member to take the place of a former member. They’re still working on more material, so the quartet only sang a couple of songs before Kordal Kombat took the stage. The quartet is four guys who met in college at the University of Minnesota Morris and started singing together. In the few years since it started doing barbershop, it’s won the 2013 Land O’Lakes Quartet and Novice championships and won the 2014 Land O’Lakes Collegiate Quartet Championship and competed a couple more times in the International Collegiate Barbershop Quartet Contest, placing as high as 8th place. The quartet was definitely an audience favorite as it sang such numbers as “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz, “Auld Lang Syne” and “Mama Says” from “Footloose.” And when the guys held the last note, you could feel it. There’s just something about barbershop singing and four-part harmony.

Fortunately the bass singer from ForeFront was able to make it to the WEAC in time for the quartet’s performance at the first concert (his plane was delayed). People were kind of wondering how that quartet could top Kordal Kombat’s performance.

Yeah, ForeFront showed why it’s the international champion. It performed such songs as “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” “Hit Me With a Hot Note,” its version of “I Get Around” and the “King George Medley” from the Broadway hit “Hamilton.” The tenor even dressed as King George. That was worth the price of admission.

And after the second concert came the afterglow with more singing. So it was a full day of harmony.