The real-life “Pitch Perfect” has arrived.
NSU’s female a cappella group, The Riff Tides, will compete in the South Division quarterfinals for the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella on Feb. 15 at the University of Florida.
Senior biology major Jannise Castillo, a beat boxer for The Riff Tides since the club started a year ago, said the group first heard about the ICCAs from their adviser, Stephani Schmidt, graduate assistant for commuter and transfer student services. Schmidt had participated in the same competition when she was an undergraduate student at Central Michigan University.
For the audition, the group submitted a video of themselves performing three songs: “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar, “Killing Me Softly” by Lauryn Hill and “Stay” by Rihanna. They purchased the arrangements for two songs from Jonathan Sparks, who wrote arrangements for the a cappella competition show “The Sing-Off.”
Castillo said rehearsals have been intense, since they have never prepared for a competition like this.
“We still have fun in rehearsal, always. But there’s more of an edge singing knowing that we have to be very much in it a hundred percent to try to do our best in competition, which is all we want to do, whether we win or lose — we made it,” said Castillo.
At the ICCAs, The Riff Tides will compete against a cappella groups from the University of Miami, the University of Central Florida, Florida State University and the University of Florida.
They will perform three songs in a 13-minute set, and will find out the day of the competition if they advanced to the semifinals, which will be held on March 15 on the campus of Vanberbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
President of The Riff Tides Jen Chia, junior marketing and theatre major, who helped initiate the organization, said they have been rehearsing for the quarterfinals for three months and have bumped up rehearsals to four times a week for two and a half hours.
Chia said, “It’s really exciting because it is our first year and there’s so much pressure because all the groups that are there are on Spotify, they’re on iTunes. They’re super famous a cappella groups.”
Vice President Sasha Pimentel, junior communication studies major and one of the founding members, is the alto or bass singer for the 20-member female group. She said The Riff Tides’ winning NSU Got Talent last year, when they were just starting out, gave them the confidence to continue.
“The fact that we were able to win that so early in our group’s history is pretty impressive, and I think it gave us a lot of fuel to the fire to just want to keep going,” said Pimentel.
The Riff Tides have performed at NSU events like Sharkapalooza, Community Fest and the Wall of Hate teardown. They also sang Christmas carols at a holiday party for transplant recipients, donors and their families for the Transplant Foundation Inc. at the Signature Grand. Organizations have been asking the group to perform at private gigs, and they’ve even been asked to sing at birthday parties.
Schmidt helped start the group last year, and assists with music directing. She was thrilled to learn the group made it to the quarterfinals.
“I was excited as an adviser and proud of what the girls had done but even more excited that the girls were able to be so proud of themselves and really accomplish something that not many groups can say that they’ve done,” said Schmidt.
