Kāpiti College’s barbershop quartet shines at Young Singers in Harmony competition

Let's Jet barbershop quartet featuring (from left) Dani Hockings, Phoenix Colombick, Elodie Craig and Jesse Pollard-Simmiss. Photo / David Haxton

Kāpiti College’s barbershop quartet, Let’s Jet, has won a coveted award at the Young Singers in Harmony competition for the third year in a row.

The quartet, comprising Elodie Craig, Phoenix Colombick, Dani Hockings and Jesse Pollard-Simmiss, won the mixed voices category at the competition held in Lower Hutt’s Town Hall.

They came third overall with Tawa College’s Big Jim and the Thin Slims coming first, and Westlake Boys High School’s Lakeside Barbers second.

“It was a great achievement because it means, out of all the youth quartets, we are the third best in the country,” Elodie said.

The quartet also won the mixed voices category in 2023 and 2022 and was judged second overall last year.

The national competition involving hundreds of students is globally recognised as one of the leading barbershop harmony programmes for youth.

For the nationals, the group performed two love songs including a barbershop take on Stevie Wonder’s For Once In My Life and a ballad by American barbershop quartet OC Times called From The First Hello (To The Last Goodbye).

“We had to take both songs up a few keys because I was singing lead and both songs were originally arranged for male voices, which meant they were a lot lower and weren’t in my range to sing,” Elodie said.

“So we brought them up a couple of keys and it was fine, and meant we could sing them as a mixed quartet, and it sounded quite good because we ended up winning.”

The quartet spent a lot of time training for the regional and national competitions, from at least twice a week to every day.

“On one of the weekends we spend three hours working on one of the songs, unpacking the meaning, the timing, everything, to make it the best on stage,” Elodie said.

“We worked a lot on musicality and it ended up being our highest-scoring category,” Jesse added.

Musicality was about how the music was interpreted, Elodie said.

“It’s taking a deeper look into the notes.

“It’s how you can take what is on the page and make it into your own thing.”

The group also tried to harness a term called the lock.

“When everything works, it creates a very unique sound,” Phoenix said. “You feel very together.”

Let's Jet barbershop quartet, from front, Elodie Craig, Jesse Pollard-Simmiss, Dani Hockings and Phoenix Colombick. Photo / David Haxton

“When you’re singing a chord, and everything is just right, it locks, and then it starts to ring, which is the ultimate goal in barbershop,” Elodie said.

“That’s why working with three other people is so precious because you have to work so closely to get it to work,” Dani said.

The group’s achievement had added kudos considering both girls were sick with colds before the competition.

“I picked up a cold two days before the competition and lost my voice the day before, so I struggled on the day but managed to get through,” Elodie said.

They were judged on singing, musicality and performance, each contributing to an overall score.

Each category has its focus for the judges and all contribute to an overall score.

Winning made all the hard work satisfying.

“We had to run down from the top stands,” Dani said.

“We were so excited and out of breath.”

“When you go to a barbershop competition, you just want to have fun, but when you win, it’s the best feeling,” Phoenix said.

Elodie, the only original member of the group since it formed in 2022, said it had been “the most significant year, particularly how far we’ve come as a quartet”.

“We all do musicals, drama and stuff, but I think this was my favourite thing of the year,” Dani said.

The quartet received a trophy and each was given a medal.