CASA - the contemporary a cappella society - Elaborate, Fun Fakeout For Barbershop Harmony Society

Elaborate, Fun Fakeout For Barbershop Harmony Society

Written by Jim Stingl / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wednesday, 25 January 2006

MILWAUKEE, WI -- Would you be fooled by a TV remote control that appeared to open the great white wings atop the Milwaukee Art Museum at the instant you pressed the button?

Roy Reiman was betting the answer was "yes" when he pulled the stunt to impress the Barbershop Harmony Society during its visit to Milwaukee earlier this month as part of a search for a new headquarters location.

"I've had that idea for a long time," Reiman wrote to David Gordon, the art museum's director, to get his blessing on the plan. "I'd like to be the first to try it."

Reiman is the founder of Reiman Publications in Greendale. It helps, too, that he serves on the museum's board. They don't lend out Calatrava's creation to just anyone off the street.

He and Anne Marie Pelkofer, manager of Greendale's village center, picked up five members of the barbershoppers' search committee at their downtown Milwaukee hotel on a recent morning and headed to the lakefront.

What the huddle of harmonizers didn't know is that Reiman had been plotting with the museum's chief building engineer, Charles Loomis, to activate the wings - officially known as the brise soleil - at precisely 8:20 a.m., about an hour and a half earlier than usual. The two men had synchronized their watches to the second.

Once Reiman and his guests were standing in front of the museum, he turned to the head of the search committee, Bill Biffle, and said, "This art museum is Milwaukee's pride and joy, and whenever we have anyone visiting Milwaukee who we really want to impress, we have this special-powered remote that lets that individual open the brise soleil at whatever time they'd like on that day."

The "special" remote was actually the one from Reiman's kitchen TV. He tried to disguise that fact and cover up the word Motorola by wrapping some red tape around it. And he added a gold bow to make it look ceremonial and flashy.

He told Biffle the remote was on loan from the museum and that he had been authorized by the mayor of Milwaukee to let him do the honors. Go ahead, he said, push that button right there. It was at that moment exactly 8:20.

"Am I supposed to aim it anywhere in particular?" Biffle asked, his hand extended. "Right at the tip of the mast," Reiman said, struggling to keep a straight face.

Music started to play. It's the regular recorded trumpet fanfare that sounds just before the wings open or close. It's done in part to alert anyone on the roof or working on the wings that they're about to move. It's like the beep-beep-beep of a truck backing up, but classier.

Now Reiman had a minute to kill before the wings would begin opening. Finally he told Biffle to push a different button. The wings began to spread. "The guy's mouth came open," Reiman said. His companions looked impressed.

Reached Tuesday by telephone in Albuquerque, N.M., where he lives, Biffle told me he totally fell for the prank in a "moment of rube-ness." His defense was that Reiman has "an aura of credibility about him" that overcame his skepticism. It wasn't until later that day that Reiman admitted the trick to his visitors and they all had a laugh.

Biffle said his committee was impressed with Greendale and Milwaukee, but the 30,000-member barbershop group last week picked Nashville as its new home. The headquarters these past 58 years has been Kenosha.

Now, if we could only use a remote to get the group to pause, rewind that decision and select Milwaukee.