NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans native and NOLA Vox co-founder Zachary Materne has been elected president of the Barbershop Harmony Society, becoming the first person from Louisiana to lead the organization since its founding in 1938. His term begins Jan. 1, 2027.
Materne has served on the BHS board of directors since 2022 and as executive vice president since 2025. He is president and co-founder of NOLA Vox, New Orleans’ all-voices a cappella community chorus and the official New Orleans chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society.
“Barbershop has been part of my life for more than 25 years, so having the opportunity to serve from New Orleans means a great deal to me,” Materne said. “This city understands that music is more than what happens on a stage. It is how people connect, how traditions are passed down and how communities are built. I want us to honor the history of this art form, strengthen the communities singing it today and make sure people continue to have a place to experience it for generations to come.”
A New Orleans Connection
Materne’s election adds another chapter to a long relationship between New Orleans and close-harmony singing. Historical research recognized by BHS traces important roots of barbershop harmony to African American close-harmony traditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, developing alongside musical traditions that helped shape early jazz. Louis Armstrong sang tenor in a street quartet as a young man, and other early New Orleans jazz figures have also been connected to the quartet-harmonizing tradition.
New Orleans’ formal relationship with the organization now known as BHS began in 1948, when the city’s first chapter was chartered. The city has since hosted BHS international conventions and other major Society events, while generations of local singers have continued the tradition.
Founded in 2023, NOLA Vox carries that legacy forward as the city’s first all-voices BHS chapter. The organization is focused on lifelong singing, community performance, music education and partnerships with other arts organizations, singers and educators.
That work includes the New Orleans Youth Harmony Festival, which returns Feb. 20, 2027, bringing students, educators and experienced singers together for a free day of music education and performance for singers in grades 8-12.
“For me, the future of BHS starts locally,” Materne said. “It is creating places where people can discover singing, return to it or simply keep doing something they love. It is young singers finding their voice, longtime singers finding a new musical home and communities coming together through harmony. That is what we are working to build with NOLA Vox here in New Orleans, and that is the perspective I will bring to this role.”
About Zachary Materne
Zachary Materne is a native New Orleanian, co-founder and president of NOLA Vox and incoming president of the Barbershop Harmony Society. He has been involved in barbershop harmony for more than 25 years and has served on the BHS board of directors since 2022 and as executive vice president since 2025.
Materne’s musical roots span the New Orleans arts community, including the Jefferson Performing Arts Society’s Jefferson Children’s Chorus, St. Louis Cathedral Boychoir and Choir, Brother Martin High School Chorus, New Orleans Opera Association, Tulane Summer Lyric Theatre and UNO Chorale. He is a 2001 graduate of Brother Martin High School and a 2007 graduate of the University of New Orleans.
Professionally, Materne is a commercial insurance and risk management consultant with Apiar Commercial Risk Management specializing in the powersports industry and other middle-market businesses. Before entering insurance, he spent nearly two decades in the powersports business, including as an operator of his family’s New Orleans dealership. His arts leadership, including NOLA Vox and BHS, is volunteer service.
About the Barbershop Harmony Society
The Barbershop Harmony Society is a nonprofit leader in community singing and adult music education, and a global community of singers of all voices, ages, and backgrounds united by a shared passion for a cappella close-harmony singing. Founded in 1938 as the Society for Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America (S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A.), the Society has grown to more than 14,000 members across North America, with allied organizations in more than a dozen countries bringing the total number of active singers to more than 70,000 worldwide.
Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, the Society preserves and extends the reach of this uniquely American musical art form — whose roots lie in African American improvisational harmony — through active programs in music education, publishing, performance, and outreach. It hosts an annual International Convention and Contest, operates Harmony University, and supports a worldwide network of choruses and quartets, working broadly to bring the fellowship, fulfillment, and excitement of vocal music to a new generation of singers.
