Over sixty students joined the stage to perform in the annual “Perfect Harmony” choral concert. This is the third annual concert since its start in 2019, taking a break in 2020, according to Dr. Lauren Ramey and Professor Thomas Richardson.
The six ETSU choirs performed on the Martin Center’s Grand Hall stage.
“The first year that Perfect Harmony occurred was in fall of 2019, and then everyone knows what happened in 2020,” said Richardson, “so that kind of put it on hold and then we started it back last year and had our second annual [concert], and this will be the third annual.”
The groups Ascension, Greyscale, BucFive, the Swashbucklers, Harmonium and Bella Voci performed for an almost full house, with almost 1,000 attendees. Each group is different and is directed in different ways.
For instance, Greyscale is directed by Dr. Ramey and Ascension is led by Professor Richardson. The other four groups are all student-led and vary from five to 16 members.
Bella Voci is the newest group to join ETSU. It is comprised of five women, who perform in a barbershop style. BucFive is similar to Bella Voci. They are comprised of five men and also perform in a barbershop style.
BucFive’s performance included ETSU’s Department of Music chair, Dr. Alan Stevens. Both groups performed many barbershop classics. Bella Voci performed “Hello, Ma Baby” and “Over the Rainbow,” and BucFive performed “The Auctioneer” and “Swing Down Chariot.”
“We’ve got all sorts of different [songs], taking each group in a completely different direction…with a wide variety there on the pop side of the acapella groups,” said Richardson, “the barbershop groups will be doing a lot of classics, and then Greyscale will take it in a different realm from that.”
The Swashbucklers and Harmonium sang opposite genres. Fittingly, the Swashbucklers performed a pirate song “Hoist the Colors,” but ended their set with A-ha’s “Take on Me.”
Harmonium sang many classics from the early 2010s, including the hit song from Nickelodeon’s “Victorious,” “Take a Hint” and Ariana Grande’s “Problem.”
Ascension and Greyscale hit the stage with a wide variety of pop songs. Greyscale was the first group following a brief intermission and began the second half of the show with Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning.” They ended their set with Ceelo Green’s “Forget You.” Ascension took the floor as the last group of the night and performed Estelle’s “American Boy” and “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”
“We really want to dive in further into getting students outside of the music department involved in acapella, we have such a rich, talented student body that most of them may want to get involved with us, but they just don’t know it yet,” said Richardson.
Many of the groups are extremely diverse in interests and majors. For instance, two-thirds of Ascension members are non-music majors, most of them majoring in history, biology and chemistry, according to Richardson.
Each group has their own social media pages and can be found online @bellavoci.etsu, @etsuswashbucklers, @harmoniumetsu, @etsugreyscale, @thebucfive_etsu and @ascensionetsu.
Each group holds auditions before the beginning of each semester; to learn more about joining, email Dr. Ramey at rameyle@etsu.edu and Professor Richardson at richardsontb@etsu.edu.
