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Last weekend saw the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers celebrating their 50th anniversary at their annual Convention. The association had done an excellent job getting everyone to look forward to it, not just with their communications throughout the year, but also with anniversary pins sent to every member, anniversary merch, and a new arrangement of Spandau Ballet’s ‘Gold’ to mark the occasion. Many of these, including crucially the new song, had been introduced for the Harmony College back in April, so we could arrive musically prepared and emotionally ready.

It was without doubt the biggest LABBS Convention I have been to – and I’ve attended every one since 1997. (Indeed, one of the things I’ve found quite boggling is what a high proportion of the life of the organisation my 30-year membership represents.) The groups who are always there were there, plus lots of the groups who only come sometimes quite sensibly chose this year as one to make the effort.

This meant that there were 41 choruses competing which I am pretty sure is the highest number ever. By coincidence, 41 was also the number of quartets who had participated in the Prelims round back in the summer – which isn’t the highest, but it’s a pretty good showing. In total there were 1466 competitors crossing the stage over the weekend. So we got a pretty good overview of how things are going around the country.

And you’d have to say they’re going well. Not just because of the numbers on stage, although they’re part of the story. If lots of people want to participate, that tells you you’re in an encouraging environment. The contest scores also tell a story of growth and development, with the top five choruses all scoring in the 80s, and you have to go down to 29th place to see a score below 70. This would have been unimaginable not so very many years ago.

(I know that not every group was happy with the specific scores and/or placements they achieved this year, but those dissatisfactions came in the context of aspirations they had brought to this particular occasion arising from other recent contests. If you took those groups’ achievements and looked back over a longer timescale, in many cases you’d see a story of overall improvement. Consistency and/or normal slight statistical variation can feel temporarily like a failure when your main trajectory is upward. So it is worth reminding yourself when you feel disappointed that progress is rarely linear, and that a holding pattern wouldn’t be disappointing if it weren’t for the experience of that longer-term narrative.)

To the listener, the skills and depth of preparation that produced these scores were clearly evident. But what was even more striking was the joyfulness. Everybody sang as if they were having a good time, like they enjoyed the songs they were bringing, and were happy to share them with us. Sometimes contest performances can be skilful and thoroughly prepared, but sung expressively of either worry about being judged harshly or intent to be better than others.

Both of these are of course available emotional states for people participating in competitions. But they’re not as uplifting for an audience to experience as the sheer pleasure of making music for people you share a deep interest with. The more skilled performances still score higher than the less-skilled ones of course, but the generosity of spirit communicates at whatever stage of their journey a group is at.

And the thing about joy is that it does wonderful things for the voice. So when people are enjoying themselves, they are set up to bring their best vocal performance to the stage. Relaxation and energy work together to generate resonance, the imagination lights up to bring expressiveness to both tone and delivery, self-consciousness recedes to let the music shine through. It was lovely to hear people in their happy place on the day, but I’m sure they could not have sounded that good if they had not also been in their happy place during the rehearsal process. Most of what you bring to the stage is, after all, what you have practised.

Thus the two stories of the Convention – the sense of celebration, and the artistic success – turn out to be linked. Generating the buzz and excitement about the event over the months during which people were preparing their performances seems to have helped people undertake those preparations in healthily positive emotional state. I have often been aware of how the framing of an experience on the day can shape both the mindset of the performers and the audience reception, but it is interesting to see it reaching back through the whole process in anticipation.

Not every year can be the biggest event in an organisation’s history. But we can learn from these peak experiences and embed some of the magic they bring to our lives in our ongoing musical praxis.