Benchmark is Australia's champion Gold Medal Seniors barbershop quartet, based in Queensland, Australia. We love singing "a Capella" four-part harmony, usually based on the barbershop style. We do our best to entertain our audiences with both toe-tapping up-tunes and heart-rending ballads.
Formed in 2008, we have competed in such events as:
- Australia’s Got Talent 2011: Benchmark reached the Grand Final, placing us in the top 10 acts Australia-wide (out of over 3,000 acts that auditioned)
- Barbershop Harmony Society International Seniors Contests: Benchmark represented Australia four times (Tampa, Las Vegas, Orlando and Long Beach), coming as high as 6th in the world.
- Pan Pacific Barbershop Championships:
- Hawaii 2009: Silver medal - Seniors
- Brisbane 2011: Gold Medal - Seniors
- Wellington 2014: Gold Medal - Seniors
- Sydney 2017: Gold Medal - Seniors
- Australian (AAMBS) National Championships:
- Hobart 2009: Gold Medal – Seniors
- Brisbane 2011: Gold Medal – Seniors
- Perth 2013: Gold Medal - Seniors
- Melbourne 2015: Gold Medal - Seniors
- Newcastle 2016: Gold Medal - Seniors
- Sydney 2017: Gold Medal - Seniors
- Adelaide 2018: Gold Medal - Seniors
- AAMBS Sunshine Region Championships: Each year, the Sunshine region of AAMBS (Australian Association of Male Barbershop Singers) runs a local contest. All choruses and quartets seeking to compete nationally must qualify here. Here's how Benchmark has done:
- 2008: Won the Gold Medals in both Seniors and Open classes (no quartet had ever won both Seniors and Open before)
- 2009: Won the Gold Medals in both Seniors and Open classes
- 2010: Won the Gold Medals in both Seniors and Open classes
- 2011: Won the Gold Medals in the Seniors class and Bronze in the Open class
- 2012: Won the Gold Medals in both Seniors and Open classes again.
- 2013: Won the Gold Medal in the Seniors class and came 4th in the Open class
- 2014: Won the Gold Medals in the Seniors class and Bronze in the Open class
- 2015: Won the Gold Medal in the Seniors class again, with Tom Percy returning as Bass
- 2016: Gold in the Seniors class again
- 2017: Gold in the Seniors and Bronze in the Open, with John Gairns as Baritone, and Ray Smyth shifted to Bass
- 2018: Copy/Paste (:-)
- 2019: Gold in the Seniors class again