Voices Carry
by Dave Allen
Somewhere between the unaccompanied soloist in the shower and the large concert choir lies the phenomenon of the a cappella group. All the backing parts of a regular song--the bass line, the guitar chords, the punctuations from a horn section--are replaced with voices. In performance, one singer takes the lead vocals in front of a semicircle of backup singers, who toss out scat syllables, while listening closely to one another to stay in tune.
After thriving in college groups and glee clubs throughout the 20th century, a cappella began to include professional "bands" like Rockapella. Eventually, groups took on new repertoire, moving from barbershop and folk tunes into vocal arrangements of jazz and pop songs.
Meanwhile, graduates of collegiate groups found they had become devotees of the art form and that they missed the close harmony and even closer friendships of their old singing groups. So they started new ones. Groups across the country began holding annual gatherings, and the oldest of these summits, Spring Sing, celebrated its 50th anniversary in May 2007.
George Bassett, a freelance editor, has been involved in these concerts since the early 1970s, first with a group called All Good Children and, since 1979, with a quartet called Cahoots. The group's membership stretches across the Northeast, with a soprano in Connecticut, a bass in the Boston area, and Bassett, 62, and his wife, alto Nancy Wilson, in Ewing, New Jersey. Even though the quartet can only assemble once a month or so, Bassett is always working up new arrangements, exploring all the ways that four voices can handle a song.
Now approaching its 20th year, the quartet has celebrated marriages and endured moves, sometimes performing as a trio. "We've never had a line-up change," Bassett notes, "and sometimes you wonder, 'How long do we keep going?'"
A chief motivation to keep the music going is the yearly Spring Sing gathering. "Some of my best friends in the world are these people I see once a year," Bassett says. He notes that his singing comrades are often his collaborators on music arrangements, and they bounce ideas off one another throughout the year.
In its 50 years, Spring Sing has gone from just "friends singing for friends" to starting a nonprofit organization formed to preserve the music's tradition and to organize the gatherings. The American A Cappella Alliance, headed by Bill Howard, 51, has 10 member groups, with a roster of dozens of adult, collegiate, and international groups that have performed as guests.
"Most of these groups thrive on having one or two in-house arrangers," Howard said. These arrangers help the groups fulfill their membership requirement of a new set of five songs each year for Spring Sing. "Unconsciously the bar gets raised each year," he added.
The Spring Sing groups preserve the style of music of the college glee clubs and arch sings while encouraging invention. Arrangers have expanded from the traditional songbook tunes into pop, rock, funk, and even hip-hop.
These groups owe their longevity to camaraderie and closeness; a cappella enthusiasts often speak of the “circle" or the “arc"--the onstage formations of the group--as the basis for a tightly knit relationship. This bond brings together groups that have been inactive for years, as in the reunion of the Bosstones, an all-male group from the Boston area, at this year's Spring Sing.
The regular gatherings continue a tradition of singing sessions from collegiate groups called "arch sings," informal concerts held to unwind before the start of the academic year or at its end to celebrate. It's just the company of fellow singers and fans--with no amplification. Spring Sing groups keep up this tradition as well by remaining unplugged, concentrating on their sound.
Howard became involved in a cappella, in his words, "purely by accident." "I met a gentleman who was singing bass in Augmented Eight in a bar. He asked, 'Do you sing?' I said, 'yes,' and he said, 'I've got some guys I'd like you to meet.'" Howard joined up and was in that group for 16 years before moving from the Washington, DC, area.
In what Howard called "the first marriage to come out of Spring Sing"--many more would come in later years--he met his wife through the annual gathering. Howard's wife Libby attended Spring Sing in 1978 in Greenwich, Connecticut; her father sang in the Grunyons, a men's group from Detroit, Michigan.
"It's a big family with a unique aspect, these summits on the East coast and the West coast," Howard said. It was because of his organizational skills as a computer and multimedia consultant and a real estate developer that he was chosen as the executive director of American A Cappella Alliance.
Rol Sharette, 75, made the leap from one Spring Sing group to another, but the bond of singing with a bunch of talented guys has stayed the same. Retired after years as a concert promoter and theater director in the Detroit area, Sharette moved to Boulder, Colorado, 10 years ago. He joined the New Wizard Oil Combination, also known as the Wizards. This outfit formed in 1972 and shaped the formation of a larger musical organization, the Colorado Vocal Jazz Society, in 1982. Sharette describes the Wizards as an "eclectic, funny group" with an age span of 40 years or more.
"We're hams, we like to get up in front of audiences," Sharette says.
Sharette also owes his marriage to his involvement in music. He met his wife Bev through the Spellbinders, a vocal harmony group that performed in nightclubs and went on tours with the USO. Bev would later sing backup for Patty Page in New York City, and the couple had moved back to Michigan after their marriage. For decades, Sharette sang with the Grunyons and developed his skills as an arranger, a role he continues to pursue with the Wizards. This all-male group performs several times a month, constantly testing out new repertoire. "I can look around at the other guys, and they're just enjoying it," he said. "We try to involve the audience and use choreography and dance."
Music has become a family affair for Sharette in his later years. At a family reunion, he pulled out an arrangement of the song "Danny Boy" from his days in the Wayne State University glee club that he spiced up with jazzy harmonies, and his six grandsons performed it.
The emotional bond of a cappella music also struck Gretchen Boehmler, a former member of the Counterparts, a mixed group from the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, area. Boehmler, 38, tried out a church choir, a community chorus, and a Gilbert and Sullivan light opera company before joining the Counterparts. The group's makeup--amateur singers working in many different fields, from law to real estate to dentistry--and frequent performances in community nursing homes and retirement centers made it a good fit for her.
"When you work together to achieve a goal, you become part of something much bigger than you," she said.
In 2006, Boehmler moved from the Philadelphia suburbs to a job as a manufacturing operations manager in southern Maryland. At her last concert at Spring Sing 2007, which her group hosted in the Philadephia suburbs, the group performed "Softly as I Leave You," one of Boehmler's favorites. She began to tear up while singing and couldn't stop crying for 20 minutes after the song ended.
"It is therapeutic and very emotional," she said. "You work hard, and you have rehearsals where everything is working and where nothing is working. You realize the group may go on without you, but you'll always be a part of it." Boehmler will return to Spring Sing 2008, to be held in Washington, DC, as an audience member. She is still searching for a group in Maryland to perform with, hoping to get the a cappella spark back into her life.
--Dave Allen was a founding member of a college a cappella group (Beyond Unison at Bucknell University) and continues to sing with several choirs in Syracuse, New York.
Voices Carry Links
Spring Sing, www.springsing.org, the annual gathering of groups in the American A Cappella Alliance www.springsing.org
Resource for sheet music and recordings, plus general history of a cappella music, www.a-cappella.com, started by Don Gooding, former members of adult group and Spring Sing member Jersey Transit
