Music performed a cappella, less commonly a capella, is music performed by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment. The term a cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato musical styles. In the 19th century, a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony, coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were often doubled by instrumentalists, led to the term coming to mean unaccompanied vocal music. The term is also used, rarely, as a synonym for alla breve.
The Hangovers are a men's collegiate a cappella ensemble based at Cornell University. Founded in 1968, they are the oldest active a cappella group on campus and are the official a cappella subset of the Cornell University Glee Club, itself the oldest student organization of any kind at Cornell University. The Hangovers' repertoire consists mainly of popular songs arranged for the ensemble by its members and alumni, but the group also performs traditional Cornell songs, as well as selections from the Glee Club repertoire on occasion.
Collegiate a cappella ensembles are college-affiliated singing groups, primarily in the United States, and, increasingly, the United Kingdom and Ireland, that perform entirely without musical instruments. The groups are typically composed of, operated by, and directed by students. In the context of collegiate a cappella, the term a cappella typically also refers to the music genre performed by pop-centric student singing groups. Consequently, an ensemble that sings unaccompanied classical music may not be considered an a cappella group, even though technically it is performing a cappella.
The Spizzwinks, stylized as The Spizzwinks(?), are an a cappella singing group of undergraduates from Yale University. Founded in late 1913, the Spizzwinks(?) are the oldest underclassman a cappella group in the United States, dating back to a first performance in early 1914.
Doox of Yale are an all-gender undergraduate a cappella group at Yale University. The group was founded by first-year students in 1952, and in 2017, was the first TTBB a cappella group in the 21st century at Yale to become all-gender.
The Princeton Nassoons are a ten to twenty-member low-voice a cappella group at Princeton University. The group has been officially self-selecting since 1941, although the original group is known to have sung together as early as 1939. The Nassoons are the oldest a cappella group at Princeton University.
The Yale Whiffenpoofs is a collegiate a cappella singing group at Yale University. Established in 1909, it is the oldest such group in the United States. Best known for "The Whiffenpoof Song", the group is composed of 14 senior students who compete for admission in the spring of their junior year. Former members include Cole Porter and Jonathan Coulton.
Redhot & Blue, usually called Redhot or RHB, is Yale University's oldest all-gender a cappella group. Founded in 1977, the group has released 17 albums. It regularly tours the United States, and it tours internationally once a year, to locations such as China, Japan, France, Italy, and Brazil. The group’s repertoire is based in the jazz genre, but has expanded to include an array of musical styles. Redhot is a member of the Singing Group Council of Yale.
Overboard is an a cappella group based in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Princeton Footnotes are a low-voice a cappella group from Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. The Footnotes are a student-run, semi-professional performance group that generally consists of ten to twenty members. The Footnotes hold auditions for first-years and sophomores twice during the school year. They are a part of Princeton University's "Acaprez" a cappella organization, which includes the Nassoons, Tigertones, Katzenjammers, Roaring Twenty, Tigerlilies, Tigressions, and Wildcats.
The Brown Derbies is an a cappella group at Brown University. They were founded by Darryl Shrock in 1982 and have released fourteen albums. They sing a variety of different genres, ranging from Rock, to Pop, to R&B and are known in the a cappella community for their unique use of syllables in the background vocals. They have toured throughout the United States and internationally, with recent performances in Beijing, China, Shanghai, China, and New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1997, the group performed for President Bill Clinton at the White House. In November 2007, they were featured on the CBS Early Show in a segment about the rising popularity of a cappella groups on college campuses, and in July 2011 they were featured on the Gospel Music Channel reality show America Sings. In January 2012, they performed in the London A Cappella Festival.
The Academical Village People (AVP) is an a cappella group at the University of Virginia founded in 1993 by a group of people who vowed to "never take themselves too seriously." They set themselves apart from other groups by being able to keep professional while maintaining their lax attitude, wild antics while performing, and their less traditional uniform of a garage mechanic style shirt. The name "Academical Village People" comes from Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village at the university in Charlottesville, Virginia. As of 2017, AVP, as it is often called for short, has released thirteen studio albums, including a greatest hits album, DECADEmical: Best of 1993-2003, of its first ten years in existence. The group has recorded many notable performances such as opening for Dana Carvey and Girl Talk, performing for Reba McEntire at the White House, concerts at the Kennedy Center, and performances in such countries as England, Spain, and Scotland.
The Virginia Sil'hooettes are a student-run, all-female identifying a cappella group at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. Once just the vision of four UVA students in the winter of 1988, the Sil'hooettes are now the most award-winning a cappella group at UVA. They have performed for thousands of people at venues including the Kennedy Center, The White House, John Paul Jones Arena, Baltimore Orioles home baseball games, and Boston Red Sox home baseball games.
The Yale Alley Cats is an undergraduate a cappella singing group at Yale University, the college's third-oldest.
BYU Noteworthy is a seven to nine-member, female Brigham Young University (BYU) a cappella group, based in Provo, Utah, United States. They won 1st place at the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) in 2007 and appeared on the first season of NBC's a cappella competition reality show The Sing-Off in 2009. Esther Yoder formed the group in 2003, aided by members of BYU's Vocal Point. Noteworthy began operating under the direction of the Performing Arts Management (PAM) at BYU in 2014. One of their most popular music videos is a cover of Amazing Grace, which won the Contemporary A Cappella Society (CARA) award for Best Religious Video and has garnered millions of views on YouTube since its release. Noteworthy has released six albums since its formation in 2003. In 2018, Noteworthy performed "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" for a Mormon Message for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus, also known as the SOBs, is an a cappella singing group from Yale University. Founded in 1938, The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus is the longest continuously running underclassmen a cappella group in the United States. Alumni of the SOBs have gone on to be founding members of other college a cappella groups such as The Pitchforks of Duke University and The Chorallaries of MIT.
Poor Little Lambs is a play by Paul Rudnick. It was first produced at the Theater at St. Peter's Church in the Citicorp Center in Manhattan, New York City, in 1982. The 1982 production, which featured David Naughton of An American Werewolf in London fame, is notable for including in its cast a number of young actors who were beginning to achieve, or later achieved, significant success in television or movies, including Kevin Bacon, Gedde Watanabe and Bronson Pinchot.
Mixed Company of Yale is an all-gender undergraduate a cappella group from Yale University. Founded in 1981, Mixed Company was originally formed as a group specializing in both sketch comedy and a cappella. Today, the group focuses primarily on singing, though the group often integrates skits and other comedy into performances. The group has toured on five continents and regularly performs for world leaders visiting Yale's campus. Mixed Company has released 18 studio albums, and their most recent recording, Third Degree, was released in summer 2021.
The Trinity College Quirks is an all-female a cappella group at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, founded in 2004 by Anna Vognsen and Brie Schwartz. They have appeared at the 2012 Silver Chord Bowl, Carnegie Hall (2016), Infinity Hall, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the 2012 Hartford Business Journal's Women in Business awards ceremony, and a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park. They have also performed with Jaimoe's Jasssz Band. They were featured on both NBC Connecticut and NPR. in October 2012. In 2013, the Quirks performed at the White House as one of the entertainment groups for the Christmas White House tours.
The CU Buffoons is the oldest collegiate a cappella group at the University of Colorado-Boulder, founded in 1962 by Dr. Oakleigh Thorne II with help from Don Grusin and Roger Nelson. The group has consisted of anywhere from 8-20 undergraduate and graduate students throughout its over 60-year history, with new members being auditioned at the start of every fall semester. With arranging being done in house by current and former group members, their repertoire consists of covers of pieces from a wide variety of musical genres, including jazz, rock, RnB, pop, show tunes, and more, and is constantly updated with new arrangements of more recent songs.
