Hannah Nitzken remembers feeling jealous when she was younger, watching her grandfather perform in the Thoroughbreds, a long-standing barbershop choir.
She wanted to be a part of something similar — but for decades, barbershop-style singing was dominated by men. Groups with women and non-men weren’t permitted to join the Barbershop Harmony Society, the largest barbershop organization in the country until 2018. Even after the organization opened its membership, groups that allowed people of different gender identities to sing together were still missing.
But now, Nitzken is finally getting a chance to fulfill her childhood dreams — she’s a member of Great River Voices, a mixed voices choir based in Louisville.
“It's just really cool to be a part of something like this, for a little Hannah that wanted to be a part of a chorus like this one,” said Nitzken, who is also the group’s board president.
Great River Voices was founded in 2023 with the expressed purpose of opening up a barbershop-style performance to all genders.
“We are very intentionally welcoming and inclusive to all people and all voices, and make that a really big part of just kind of who we are and what our identity is,” said Drew Wheaton, Great River Voices director.
Wheaton had been in the barbershop choir space for years when a friend approached him about wanting to find a mixed-voice group.
“We put a small team of people together to make it happen,” Wheaton said.
The group tries to ensure its mission of supporting each other, loving each other, encouraging each other and building each other up comes through in everything they do, Wheaton said.
Now entering their third year, the members of Great River Voices are preparing for a show at the Kentucky Center for the Arts’ Bomhard Theater, as a recipient of a KPA Spaces for All grant.
The “Home Is Where the Heart Is” performance is Saturday at 3 p.m.
“The whole theme is kind of centered around, like, various ways of thinking about home,” Wheaton said. “Home could be a place, but home could also be your family. Home could be your friends. Home could be where your love is.”
For many of the Great River Voices members, the choir and its community have become like a second home.
Jeremy O’Brien’s dad was a barbershopper, his brother is one and so is his nephew.
But it wasn’t until Great River Voices that the women in O’Brien’s family had a chance to join the tradition alongside the men.
“To have my sister up there in the same group as me, and to hopefully have one of my nieces sing with us soon. Like all of that is just, it's just a huge, huge deal,” O’Brien said.
Dee Elliot has sang since her youth, but never in the barbershop style.
She said a friend invited her to a Great River Voices meeting.
“I came to the first little meeting that we had, and it just kind of felt right from there, like it just felt natural,” Elliot said.
She said the welcoming and friendly culture at Great River Voices is a reprieve from the world.
“It is like a breath of fresh air, really, compared to the outside world,” she said. ”Everyone you meet is happy to see you when you walk in, and it just greatly contrasts all the negativity and stuff that you get outside.”
