Ithacappella - WinTour 2011

Oops! Wrong wintour!

Also, if your still following this blog, catch up with us on our current winter tour on our blog Wintour2012!

Humbled

Alrighty.  It’s about 3:30 in the morning.  A few of us just recently finished a 3 hour long poker game, and I’m sleeping on a sweet leather couch in the most ridiculously amazing hotel in North Conway, NH.  I highly recommend you check out the Adventure Suites, at adventuresuites.com.  This place has been AWESOME.

But anyhow, as I’m laying here about to go to bed, I decided to check up on some YouTube stats for the PS22 videos, as I’ve been doing a few times a day because.. I mean, it’s pretty cool.

First thing I notice—Firework is at just about 100,000 views, and the video was posted on a Gawker site! Which is really cool for me because I’m a huge geek and I love Gawker Media.  Check that out here (including some fun comments.. one of which I replied to, I promise it was mostly sarcastic.): http://tv.gawker.com/5733777/ps-22-performs-charming-a-cappella-version-of-katy-perrys-firework

I then went and took a look at the Imagine video, which, while getting far less attention in terms of YouTube views, a record of an event that honestly is much more special to me, personally (Not to say Firework wasn’t—it was beyond words—but singing Imagine the way it happened, completely improvised.. that was it for me).  Looking at the little Insight detector, I found that a bunch of hits were coming from The Maddow Blog.  Clicking on it, I found what I’m pretty sure is a blog tied in with Rachel Maddow from MSNBC, and an entry from someone who works on it.  And from THERE, I found a reference to another website that posted the video, dedicating it to the people of Tuscon, AZ after the recent tragedy in that city.

So I continued my search on to Balloon-Juice.com, to find the video of our impromptu collaboration actually being used next to footage of President Obama’s speech to the people of Arizona, and a title of “PS22 Sings Imagine, (To Tuscon, With Love).”

Hang on.  Back up.  Mr. B sat down at a piano and started playing Imagine, a girl stood up in the front of the room, and we started making noises in the background, and all of a sudden, this moment that will stay with us forever for our own reasons is being toted as something that can help people cope with tragedy, remind them of the good in their lives, and give them hope for the future?  Are you serious?  Is this really what we get to do with our winter breaks?  It is an absolutely humbling and unbelievable truth to step back and look at—and perhaps I’m over-exaggerating to make myself feel better, but the fact is that we were a part of something that helped people we’ve never even met, and we did so by having fun with people that we love, and a room of children and a teacher who inspire us to be the best that we can be.  And one more line about that, I completely realize that in the vast majority of these online posts of Firework and Imagine, we are rarely mentioned by name, if mentioned at all, and I honestly could not be more okay with that.  We love the PS22 Chorus, and they have sincerely helped our group grow over the past year.  The more recognition they can get out of something that we were there for, the better.  We are PUMPED by that.  I know we joke about wanting so badly for Katy Perry to tweet our videos—but I promise you, we as a group realize what is actually important to take away from the experiences we have and the moments of success they may bring.

I realize that this blog has been a bit…disjointed.  One post will be describing things we did one day, another post will be about how amazing Jimmy is, another post with a video of someone getting slapped… and yet, a fairly large handful of people have started following over the past two weeks, and, I assume, have been reading these ridiculous posts.  In two weeks, we have performed for easily over a thousand people, possibly two thousand.  Students from NINETEEN—I’ll say that again—NINETEEN different schools have seen us perform, teach vocal percussion, and make a pretty strong effort to get them interested in sticking with music.  The Ithaca College and Ithacappella names have been seen by close to 100,000 people between our performances and our YouTube collaborations.  I don’t write out these statistics to brag—I write them because I am in awe of them.  It is ridiculous to think that in two weeks of work, so much could be accomplished.  

These numbers are a testament to many, many people that I could write pages and pages about, but I’ll spare you.  Instead, as the conductor of this group, I’ll write about how this is a testament to the 18 guys that I feel truly honored to direct this year.  I’ll tell you, with incredible bias, that these 18 guys (and Ian, our sound guy, of course) are the hardest working guys in collegiate a cappella.  For this entire year, and especially this tour, there hasn’t been a challenge or a ridiculous schedule that we as a board could throw at them that they couldn’t meet.  Every single opportunity in front of people is met with excitement.  On top of that, they sing pretty damn well, too.  

Now that I’m trying to describe it, it’s actually extremely difficult to find the right words for what these 18 guys bring to the table, but I do know this—tomorrow, we’ll wake up and hang out in this ridiculous of ridiculous hotels, and I’m probably going to make an effort to show the guys the ‘Imagine’ links, and while people may be finally enjoying the end of the ‘Vacation’ part of tour, I can promise you that every member of this group will take a minute to look at the impact we’ve made on other people, directly or indirectly, and in the grand scheme of this tour, that will be what stays with them forever.

So, with great thanks to the families that helped us live, the teachers and schools that gave us work, the IC organizations that gave us money, Mr. B and the PS22 Chorus for just being the best younger siblings (Mr. B’s words) an a cappella group could ever ask for, the alumni of this group that worked so hard to give us the opportunities to do what we do now, every person that came to a concert or workshop, and the people who are still reading this blog, it is now 4:00 in the morning, and I feel as honored as ever to be a part of this group, and humbled to see what we have done has gone on to accomplish.

Thanks for indulging my love for social networking and blogs,

Dave Grossman
Ithacappella ‘08-‘11, Conductor ‘10-‘11

Adventure Suites!!!

We had a smorgasbord of breakfast food this morning at Dave G’s house. Right after, we headed to North Conway, New Hampshire. The ride up from Boston wasn’t bad at all. We’re used to 2.5 hour drives by now. Plus, we knew we were in a safe place when we saw the signs along the highway warning us about the moose (mooses? meese?): “DRIVE CAREFUL MOOSE WILL KICK YOUR ASS.” I’m not joking, that was an actual sign. When we all arrived, our jaws dropped at the vast wonderland that was Adventure Suites, a theme hotel. We got a tour of the place. The lobby alone has hundreds of DVDs for us to watch at our leisure, a pool table, a small diner with food around the clock for us, and a real live cat that wanders through the halls. We’re staying in 3 suites: Owner’s Quarters, Showtime, and Motorcycle Madness. Since I don’t feel like explaining everything just check out their website at www.adventuresuites.com. Austin, Geoff and I decided to utilize the kitchen in Owner’s Quarters and make dinner for everyone. So we went to the nearest grocery store and bought ingredients necessary to cook up some salad, Texas toast, pasta, and Chicken Parmesean. Geoff did most of the cooking…and it was delicious to say the least. Who knew he was such a cook?

-Dave K

From Austin

I apologize that this might be more of a personal blog entry than a group update. This seemed a good place to write about my doings and thoughts from the last few days, and I really wanted to get this all out there.

Planning and running an 18-day tour for 20 guys is not easy. Without the help of the rest of the board (Dave, Jimmy, Johnny, and Chris) I would have gone crazy and tour would have been in shambles before it even started.  Between all of the emails, finding places to go for workshops and concerts, figuring out transportation and food costs, arranging places to sleep, dealing with money, dealing with snow, driving safely and in the right direction, running on little sleep, fighting off getting sick, not losing our voices, not losing people (WHERE did Phillip, the invisible 21^st Ithacappellican go?), making last-minute adjustments for new information and forgotten details, trying to not be awkward on stage (or in person), remembering to lift the soft pallet and not allow the strong articulations of “joh doh jacken a joh doo weh det doo doh” to make us go flat, etc, etc, it can be difficult to find a moment to just do nothing. Through all of this busyness, it can be hard to separate the insignificant from the meaningful.

On Saturday afternoon, my Grandma, Betty Kiley, passed away.  On what would have been my Grandpa’s birthday, she went peacefully with my Mom beside her.  I drove back home from Ned’s house to Vestal on Monday morning. The death was expected, and since we had an extra car on tour we knew that if I had to leave for a few days the rest of the group would be fine. The Brennans were wonderful and offered supportive words, as did the Knowles’ the day before. After all of the sincere thoughtfulness from the guys before I left, the text messages and phone calls checking up on me and letting me know what’s been going on and telling me that it isn’t the same without me there, and the chance to proudly look at the group and seeing others step up to make tour great, I am very much humbled to see how rare and awesome it is to have the friends that I have. These guys are not just my nerdy a cappella friends, they are my second family.

My Grandma’s wake was on Tuesday, which brought a rush of long-missed family and many of her life-long friends.  She would often ask me to sing at gatherings, and I would almost always shyly decline because I didn’t know what to sing, wasn’t warmed up, didn’t know the right key, etc. When she passed I knew I wanted to sing something, and thanks to my Premium Blend girls I already knew a version of Parting Glass, an old Irish farewell song. I accidentally sang it in a key much higher than I had anticipated, but I managed to get through it and I feel good about it. I think I would have really regretted keeping my mouth shut this time.

The funeral was Wednesday morning. There were snowstorms all over, but a lot of people managed to make it to the church anyway.  I sang Amazing Grace with the choir from the loft, which I’ve never done before.  Everyone was really supportive and friendly, and I got to play with my niece and nephew for a few hours. I felt a real sense of unity and love. From death comes life, love, remembrance, and understanding…

Taking a step back from tour allowed me to find time to do nothing and think. Each day on tour required a lot of planning and sacrifices from a lot of different people, and I want to name some of the people who spent a lot of time, money, and effort to make our 2.5 weeks together so special. Not to sound like an actor receiving an award for something, I’d like to give my sincere thanks:  for food and housing from the Knowles’, Wilbers, Zeitlers, Libelos, Petersons, Brennans, Kallers, Mirandas, Rabes, Grossmans, Sands’, and all of the homestays that let us young strangers into their homes; to Dr. Avery and Esther for all that they do; to SGA, Alumni Hall, and the Tri-Fund for helping us get what we need financially; and to the schools and teachers that worked so hard to set up our workshops, assemblies and concerts (as well as figure out/act as homestays, feed us, entertain us, advertise for us, etc.): McClosky, Speakman, Luisi, DiIorio, Sengin, Blazier, Breinberg, Howell, Contino, Maiese, Desjardins, Grande, Morel, and Roeder.

To my Mom, Dad, Daria, Jack, Devin, Nicole, Alex, Sasha, Jake, Stacey, Owen, Chase, Uncle Bobby, my aunts, cousins, roommates, Ithacappella brothers (Ian included!), Premium Blend girls, my teachers, students, friends from home: I love you all immensely and I thank you for making my life the way that it is. You are the important things in this world.

With love,

Austin

Boston - Part 1

Oh what days we’ve had here in Boston.  If I may recap the chronicles of my hometown:

Wednesday: We did NOTHING.  We got to our hotel at like 1 in the morning the night before and stayed in watching the snow.  It was great.  Except when 6 unfortunate things in my life combined to make my iphone not work for like 8 hours and I had to use Geoff’s phone, drive home for decent internet to download two 600 MB files and make it work again.  Not fun.  A tip: don’t jailbreak your iOS devices, especially after your hard drive crashes, you’re in a place with lousy internet and the lock button on your iphone/ipod/ipad hasn’t been working.  Oh man.

Thursday: We sang at the Pike School in Andover! It was one of the best middle school gigs I’ve been a part of.  Middle school shows are fun because a lot of kids come in acting too cool for school (don’t deny it), but that gives us some incentive to bring it and get them excited about this silly thing we do. AND one of the kids that I teach in the summer goes there and she loved it, AND the mother and sister of another girl I teach that USED to go there both saw the show and enjoyed it, so that was all a nice pleasant surprise! We headed out to Premium Blend’s concert in Marlborough which was solid.  We basically sat in the front few rows and acted like idiots the whole time, but apparently it helped them?  Great, now we’ll be encouraged to be stupider. Oh well. Anyhow, it was a great show and a ton of fun, and definitely nice to see some of our friends from IC, both past and present (Yay Shannon and Adrianne :) :) ) We headed back to my house for approximately 40 pounds of food prepared for 20 people.  I wish that math was wrong.  I don’t think it is.

Yesterday was a grand old time, going through Dracut, Wakefield and Marblehead.  First of all, it’s been quite embarrassing having as much traffic on 93, 95 and 495 as there’s been the past couple days.  traffic on 93 south no where near Boston at noon? Are you serious?  Come on, Massachusetts.  I’ve been talking you up for months.  Anyhow, we got to Dracut and did an assembly for the choral students there.  Afterwards, we had HIGH SCHOOL LUNCH!!! It’s exciting to know that as a future music educator (i don’t think that’s been said in this blog yet), I get to look forward to that for the rest of my life.  And our wonderful helpers (whose names I can’t remember and now I feel like a jerk) made us all ice cream dishes to take on the road since we had to bolt out of there. I think we made some football players angry for taking their lunch table.  Sorry, fellows. 

Then we headed down to Wakefield High School to do a workshop with the a cappella group from their school.  We tried to limit our singing so we could do some work with them, and it was AWESOME.  They sang And So It Goes by Billy Joel, with full movement in it.  First off, let’s just establish something.  And So It Goes is an amazing song.  Like really, nice job, William.  Anyhow, we did a lot of work with performance, connecting to the text, and letting that drive the song, and WOW did they try it.  They sang it for us twice, and it was like a complete 180 difference.  It was awesome.

We next ventured to Marblehead, to teach Firework to FOUR high school groups (all from Marblehead) with Premium Blend.  Ithaca a cappella and Marblehead a cappella have a really great connection since we brought their girls group, Luminescence, up for Acappellooza last year.  Premium Blend did a workshop there during the day, and we were all very excited to pull this all together.  And WOW. It took about 30 minutes to make the song awesome, and another 15 to just make it amazing.  It was a blast, and we were all SO excited to sing it in the concert that night.

We headed over to Abbot Hall to set up for the show.  Abbott Hall is the Town Hall in Marblehead, built in.. I think the late 1700s or early 1800s? Either way, it was quite the space.  IT HAD A RAKED STAGE. How cool is that?  Anyways, the concert was amazing, and we were BLOWN AWAY by Marblehead’s groups.  And huge props to Lumi’s soloist on Party In The USA who didn’t just sing and RAP the crap out of the song, then turned it around and did vocal percussion without a microphone louder and better than anyone in our group.  Word. Up.  Andy and I sat in the audience, stunned.  Premium Blend really put together an awesome set for the night, and the huge joint number of Firework was a blast.

And LASTLY, we went over to the Sands’ house for dinner.  Oh man. Hannah’s family basically made last night happen with the concert, and then had some amazing food afterwards.  A HUGE thank you from the whole group for that.

We’re about to head into Boston, and we have our last tour concert TONIGHT in Reading, MA.  Go to it! Or else!

Some cool and frustrating tidbits.

So, this video of Firework has been exploding, which is SO COOL.  In like 60 hours it’s got about 57,000 views.  It was apparently shown on TV in GERMANY? A friend of mine sent me a facebook message from LA, saying her friend was watching the video and he wanted to meet Brett.  Crazy, right?  It’s awesome!

Now here’s the frustrating part.  You all need to understand that I think everyone in this group is obsessed with Katy Perry.  Not like creepy, stalker obsessed with Katy Perry.  We just all think she’s freaking gorgeous (#ithacapun) and really talented.  So basically, we’ve all been on the edge of our seats waiting for her to see this video and tweet about it or something.  If you look at the comments, EVERYONE is like ‘omgzors Katy Perry needs to see this! everyone needs to tweet this to katy perry!’ and if you search the twitterverse for ithacappella or PS22 or things like that, you’ll see a bunch of people tweeting the video to a miss ‘@katyperry.’  However, unless she just isn’t broadcasting it because she thinks it sucks, it seems as though she still hasn’t seen it.  So we need your help.

Do you haz twitterz? If so, tweet the crap out of this video to @katyperry.  We’re really proud of how this collaboration came out, and we want to be able to share this experience with the world.  If that video doesn’t make you smile or make you move, check for a pulse, because you just might be dead (Yes, IC Music people.  I just said that).  We went into planning this visit to PS22 with the goal of putting together something that would make people happy, and it would just be awesome if Katy Perry, the love of our lives, saw it, and put it out there for 5,000,000 of her followers to see also.