Harvard Opportunes Compete at ICCA Quarterfinal

In a sold-out performance punctuated by cheers and laughs, the Harvard Opportunes competed with seven other local college singing groups at the first Northeast quarterfinal of the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella on Saturday evening.

“This year is the twentieth anniversary of ICCA, and tonight is our first competition in the region, so we are really excited,” says Diana Galeano, the ICCA Northeast Producer. As the only global tournament of collegiate a cappella, ICCA attracts student groups from around the world and is known for its competitive selection process. This year, in the Northeast region alone, more than 300 a cappella groups submitted videos of their performances in the preliminary round in hopes of winning a spot at the quarterfinals, according to Galeano.

At the competition, the Opportunes, Harvard’s oldest co-ed a cappella group, gave a performance that fused the styles of different eras and genres. “We have three different songs that were stand-alone, and we combined [them] into an eleven-and-half minute mega-song,” says Dylan R. Schaffer ’16, music director of the Opportunes. In its arrangement, the group wove together Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T.,” Estelle’s “American Boy,” and a Kanye West medley.

“It’s a really cool idea, and also very risky, and we knew that going in,” says Ratna Gill ’16, a member of the Opportunes. “It’s risky because you get tired [during] an eleven-and-half minute song. Also, the songs are in different keys, so the transitions are tricky. We worked on those a lot, but it’s still difficult to execute them.” Despite the challenge, the group enjoyed its experiments, according to Gill. The Opportunes even replicated the auto-tuned intro of Kanye West’s “Lost in the World” through purely vocal performance, a practice that Schaffer says is unusual for live performance and very rare in a cappella.

To materialize their ideas, the group devoted extensive effort to practice. “We had a lot of four-hour rehearsals this week,” Schaffer says. “We went on a retreat last weekend up in Vermont just to rehearse for this.” Since the group was assigned to the earliest quarterfinal, which took place at the beginning of the semester, they also faced time management challenges and logistical issues. “We have a thesis writer, and it’s shopping week,” Schaffer says. “We actually sent out some of the music ahead of time in J-term, so people [could] learn it [and] come back ready to go.” Schaffer estimates that the group members trained together for 26 hours in the days leading up to the competition and put much more time into practicing individually.

In addition to honing their sound, the group also dedicated significant time to the look of their performance. “The entire set at ICCA is meant to be choreographed,” Schaffer says. “At our dress rehearsal we practiced everything from how we walk on stage to how we start each song, to the transitions, to our final bow. Everything is a visual performance, not just a musical one. Tying all that together, I think, is very important.”

After three hours of intense competition, the Opportunes were not able to advance further in the tournament. “We have no regrets because [those were] some of our best performances,” Gill says. “When we walked off stage we were actually shocked at how much energy we had. We all had a lot of fun….But the other groups are also really good.”

Boston University’s In Achord and Northeastern University’s UniSons, the two winners of the quarterfinal, will perform again at the semifinal at Boston’s Symphony Hall on April 17.

—Staff writer Tianxing V. Lan can be reached at tianxing.lan@thecrimson.com.