Barbershop quartets to raise funds with Valentine’s serenades

Every year, couples face the same conundrum: what to get their significant others for Valentine’s Day.

The Silver Statesmen Barbershop Chorus offers one possibility: sending a quartet to your loved one’s home or work. There, the quartet — with a baritone, bass, tenor and lead — offers a private serenade, singing two love songs, such as “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” or “Heart of My Heart.” The service includes a personalized card and a red rose.

The group has been offering the serenades for years and said it never fails to make an impression.

“There’s everything from crying to laughter,” said Roger Andersen, coordinator of the program. “Sometimes we get special requests from men. They can write out a special message in the card. We work that out ahead of time.”

Some men, he said, want the woman being serenaded to receive a bouquet of flowers, so they accommodate that upgrade as well.

Over the years, some women also have hired the Silver Statesmen to serenade their husbands, but they said it’s not that common.

The quartets go anywhere the recipient is likely to be found on Valentine’s Day, usually work — schools, office buildings, businesses.

Malinda Maile, who works at a financial company in Summerlin, recalled the surprise of being serenaded last year. The receptionist called her up front, saying a “personal friend” was there to see her. Instead, she found the quartet awaiting her. They went into the company’s glass conference room and, with her husband there as well, she was sung to and presented with a rose as fellow employees stopped to watch.

“It’s almost that same feeling as being proposed to,” she said. “It catches you off guard, but for that moment, you’re that princess in the spotlight.”

Last year, the Silver Statesmen did about 24 Valentine’s Day serenades. Andersen said the group would like to do at least 100 this year. It sees about 10 percent repeat business.

“We divide the city up by quadrants,” he said, describing the logistics behind the effort. “This is one of our major fundraisers. We’ve been doing this for a lot of years.”

He said quartets have never run out of gas or gotten a flat tire on their way to a recipient’s location but that in the days before cellphone GPS, they did encounter issues with directions. Organizers quickly learned to take specific details on how to find the pertinent address.

It’s not always the woman being serenaded who has the heartfelt reaction.

“I’m a retired Air Force guy, and one of our (recipients) was a young lady whose husband was overseas,” Andersen said. “That one hit me; I felt it. It made me really put my heart into the song.”

The service starts at $50. New this year is the option of adding a teddy bear or a box of candy to go with the rose and the card.

The Silver Statesmen nonprofit is trying something else new for 2015: approaching casinos to see if they would like to sponsor the quartets for four-hour periods. The quartets would not go to hotel rooms but rather likely move around to sing in the casino’s restaurants, public areas, wedding chapel and high roller areas.

To book a serenade, visit tinyurl.com/mxayotg or call 702-498-2777 or 702-280-2815.

For more information on the Silver Statesmen Barbershop Chorus, visit silverstatesmenbarbershopchorus.com.

Contact Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.