About our director - Jim Shubert

Jim first heard barbershop harmony in July of 1966.  While working downtown he walked by the mass sing at the S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A. International convention held in Chicago that year.  Fascinated by so many men making such a marvelous sound unaccompanied, he stopped and asked what was going on. This ultimately lead to him joining the Evergreen Park (Ill.)  chapter, where, thru a progression of adventures and mis-adventures, he wound up as their director several years later.
  For the next 20 years Jim directed several barbershop choruses in and around the Chicagoland area including the Oak Lawn, DuPage Valley, and Chicago Metro chorus, then took a change in musical direction and spent the next 16 years as Director of Music Ministries at St. Patrick’s Church in Lemont, Il. 

Although he might have taken a few years off as a barbershop arm-waver, that didn’t mean that Jim was not active in barbershopping.  His quartet “CrossTown Connection” had been a medalist quartet in the Illinois District for many years.  Then, in a fit of Senior Citizen enthusiasm, they won the Illinois District Senior Quartet Championship in 2008.  Shortly after that both Jim and Marty Jahnel, the tenor in the quartet, moved to Florida.  Not being daunted by long-distance rehearsals, with both the lead and Bari still living in the Chicagoland area, they soon reregistered as a Sunshine District Quartet and were thrilled to win the Sunshine District Senior Quartet Championship in 2010.

Since giving up snow-bird status and settled full-time in Bonita Springs,  Jim’s first stop was to join the Naples/Ft. Myers BHS chapter, where he is Associate Director,  and then found his way, rather circuitously but definitely fortuitously,  to the Venetian Harmony Chorus where he is looking forward to a long and successful relationship with those delightful sisters in song.