Ladue’s all female a cappella group Viva Voce won first place at the quarterfinals of the International Championship of High School A Cappella (ICHSA) Sunday, Feb. 4.
A total of 10 groups performed at the competition which was held at the 560 Music Center. The top two groups from each quarterfinal competition advance to the semifinals in Chicago on March 10.
“[Winning quarterfinals] was exhilarating,” sophomore Tori Campos said. “There was disbelief for a good moment, but then it was pure adrenaline and ecstasy and it was awesome.”
Viva Voce performed three songs on Sunday: “Greedy” by Ariana Grande, “When We Were Young” by Adele and “Hate on Me” by Jill Scott. Junior Claire Golden, one of the students who helped start Viva Voce, said her favorite piece to work on was “When We Were Young.”
“It’s our only ballad in our ICHSA set and we have a lot of really beautiful harmonies,” Golden said. “We also don’t have as much choreography, so we can all focus on the vocals.”
Outside of competition season, Viva Voce meets every Thursday at 6:30 a.m. to rehearse. The girls are expected to learn new music outside of rehearsal so they can work on polishing the songs when they meet.
“Singing in front of a crowd is amazing, but there’s lots of things that happen behind the scenes that the audience never really experiences,” Golden said. “In my opinion, the best times are when we finally hit a chord perfectly for the first time or just when we’re bonding through our love of music.”
Middle school choir teacher Leah Alrutz was excited when a few of her former students approached her in 2016 and asked her to sponsor Viva Voce. She describes the members of the group as some of the most hardworking, talented and dedicated students she’s worked with.
“ICHSA is all about the journey to get there,” Alrutz said. “I don’t care if we place or not, but just watching the girls be so dedicated and improve so much in our rehearsals prepping for this show makes it all worth it.”
