Chorale Concert for Father’s Day

Conductor Mark Barville has a great idea for Father’s Day. Bring dad and a picnic to the bluffs overlooking the Pacific and listen to the Long Beach Chamber Chorale sing pops tunes that will bring back the old man’s youth.

“I’m bringing my dad,” Barville said. “It’s my present to him.” From the audience, Barville’s father will watch his son conduct the chorale as it moves through popular songs of the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, including “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “Night and Day,” “Over the Rainbow” and “Both Sides Now.”

A men’s doo-wop group and its feminine equivalent, the Shebeats, will perform separate sets, including such standards as “Duke of Earl,” “Blue Moon,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Mr. Sandman.”

The June 21 concert will be on the lawn in front of the Long Beach Museum.

The last time the chorale performed, more than 450 attended and the crowd cheered for an encore.

“We didn’t have one ready!” said Barville, 33, of Long Beach. This time, he said, “we’ll be prepared.”

In the three years since the Long Beach Chamber Chorale started out as a bunch of friends getting together for dinner, it has become an important part of Southeast Los Angeles County’s music scene, Barville said. Though many of the chorale’s members aspire to become professional singers, they work day jobs ranging from florist to aerospace executive to customer service representative.

The chorale sings the national anthem at the Long Beach Grand Prix and gives concerts of Mendelssohn’s “Elijah,” Handel’s “Messiah” and Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.”

“I pour myself into the classical because of its depth,” said Barville, who just finished an orchestral conducting program at USC. “But I’m still nuts about Judy Collins’ “Both Sides Now.” I remember singing it in sixth grade. I still cry when I hear it.”

For the Father’s Day concert, the grounds will open at 4 p.m. at the Long Beach Museum of Art, 2300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach. The music begins at 5 p.m. Tickets cost $10. Information: (310) 433-0951.

Also at the museum is the ongoing exhibit “The Japanese American Internment Reconsidered,” a compelling look at the World War II camps where Japanese-Americans were banished by the federal government. More than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were sent to the camps, the majority of whom were U.S. citizens.

The exhibit focuses on the works of third-generation Japanese-American artists as they search for the real story behind the forced exile of their families. Perhaps, the work suggests, the Japanese were interred because so many Japanese farmers were successful in California.

Japanese farmers had “infiltrated every strategic spot” in California, according to one official reason for relocating them to camps.

After World War II, the Japanese returned from the camps to find their land either confiscated or in ruins. The artists use video, installations and other media to explore the injustice often repressed and rarely discussed by the Japanese whose lives were disrupted and who suffered hardships at the camps.

The exhibit continues through July 5. Admission is $2. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Information: (310) 439-2119.