About
Singing at the 2024 Barbershop Harmony Society International Chorus Contest in Cleveland, OH.
OVERVIEW
The Fog City Singers are a Tenor-Bass chorus in San Francisco founded in Fall 2015. We like barbershop—we are the current Far Western District chorus champions, and finished sixth at the 2024 International Barbershop Chorus Contest in Cleveland—but we love choral and contemporary a cappella music too. In 2019, we were the featured ensemble at the California Choral Directors Association state conference in San Jose, CA. Today, we continue to push ourselves and our audiences to look at barbershop and other a cappella music in new ways, in accordance with our mission.
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to create a close fraternity of musicians; to apply diverse, world-class resources; and to revolutionize how barbershop music is performed and appreciated.
VISIT
Our rehearsals are open to visitors! We’ve welcomed traveling barbershoppers, local conductors, family members, interested singers, and more. We rehearse in San Francisco on select Monday nights.
AUDITION
We value diverse musical backgrounds. We value virtuosity. We value humility. We take our music-making seriously, but we never take ourselves seriously.
If you're an experienced singer interested in singing with us—for just one set or on an ongoing basis!—you can audition at the beginning of our next project.
Our Director
Fog City has been directed by Kory Reid since August 2023. Prior to Kory’s tenure we were directed from 2015 to 2023 by Chris Lewis.
OUR FOUNDING
The Fog City Singers were founded in October 2015 by six members of the Bay Area choral and barbershop communities. They had a simple question: what would happen if barbershop music were infused with influences from San Francisco’s rich musical tapestry? Specifically, what might Barbershop have to gain from the diverse music singing all around the city? Likewise, what might others learn from the techniques and traditions that barbershoppers cultivate in that unique American art form?
To explore these ideas, our founders invited 25 of the best singers they knew to memorize four songs at home, attend three rehearsals, then perform a friends-and-family concert immediately following the third meeting. In the end, we were pleased to discover that this was a winning strategy. The music gelled instantly, and the sound we produced was one that none of us had expected. For some of us, we were moved to unabashed squeals of excitement.
Nearly 100 people attended our debut concert on November 7th, and thousands more have watched our concert video on social media in the days thereafter.
→ Read more about our founding story on Medium.
