After a busy weekend full of workshops, masterclasses, concerts and a scholastic competition at the Los Angeles A Cappella Festival, Archer’s a cappella groups bonded while spending time together at the event. 

Members of both the Unaccompanied Minors and Something Major were able to collaborate more at the festival. 

“[We] left feeling incredibly inspired to be a better, more cohesive group,” Anna Allgeyer ’18 said.

The Archer singers joined other high schools and even some college groups at Calabasas High School to participate in the Los Angeles A Capella Festival (LAAF) on the weekend of Feb. 3-5.

The festival began on Friday with a scholastic competition, which Music Director Kate Burns described as “essentially what you see in Pitch Perfect.”

Burns continued, “There were different themes, so [in] the first round, [the competitors] had to sing songs that were supposed to show off specific parts of their group’s sound.”

A high school group defeated all of the college groups which Burns found to be “awesome.”

The next morning, the singers attended seminars that covered everything from percussion and beatboxing to solo techniques and how to compose a cappella music.  

Burns taught a workshop on Saturday called “From Drab to Fab,” which students from various high schools attended. It focused on strengthening group sound through warm-ups and different rehearsal techniques. 

Junior Omari Benjamin found the workshops she attended to be extremely useful.

“They helped us learn how to hone our skill and make our performance better,” she said.

That night, the singers then had the opportunity to watch professional artists perform in concert. The two headlining bands were Resound and Lark, the latter of which is an all-female group. 

Allgeyer shared that listening to Lark was the highlight of her experience at the festival. 

“They had a woman with the voice of a bass and she inspired all of the alto 2s,” she said.

Burns echoed Allgeyer’s enthusiasm about the concert, noting that it was particularly enjoyable to see Archer students so engaged. 

“Just watching [the Archer Girls] watch the concert was pretty cool because the groups are so great— just hearing such an amazing A Capella group is pretty awesome,” Burns said.

On the final day of the festival, the singers attended the industry track, which taught singers about different careers in music. They also listened to several keynote speakers, all of whom work in the a cappella industry.

As noted by Burns, one of the speakers was a man “who arranges for Penatonics and Pitch Perfect. [He is] one of the biggest names in a cappella.”

During the presentation, the attendees learned how to record and film a cappella for music videos. 

Burns was grateful that her students were able to experience the sense of community gained from a cappella first hand while attending LAAF. 

“[A cappella] is a huge community— a community of love and support,” she said.