This past Sunday, the University was lucky enough to have a musical guest! If you recall in a previous post, I mentioned that Octaves was having our first real gig this semester on March 8th. The Suspensions, West Chester University’s all male a cappella group, is currently on tour and decided to contact us and Royal Harmony with the interest of having a collaboration concert! The Suspensions kicked off the concert with Bruno Mars’s Treasure and performed about four songs after that. Royal Harmony prepared two songs and Octaves sang three, all which were spread out in between T. S.’s performances. Everybody’s songs were great; however, the absolute best part of this hour long concert was the song all three groups sang together. For about two or three weeks, Royal Harmony, Octaves and The Suspensions had been practicing the pop hit, Some Nights by F.U.N. And let me just say…singing this all together was well beyond fun! (See what I did there?) Although we all had been learning the song in our own groups, we were never able to rehearse it all together in the same room until that very day. None of us could get over how unbelievably full the sound was! It is times like these when I realize there is truly no other feeling like being on stage with an amazing musical group.
The Suspensions were not only an incredibly vocally talented ensemble, but were an all around friendly and entertaining group of young men. What I loved the most about this performance was that it brought together three groups of individuals that are all passionate about the same thing: music! Being in an a cappella ensemble makes watching other a cappella performances that much more exciting. Seeing the songs these men chose, the way they presented themselves on stage and paying attention to how each voice part worked with the others definitely kept me interested. And besides, when you’re a singer, who doesn’t want to be around other singers? There is nothing more fun than belting out songs and jokingly beatboxing with people who enjoy it just as much as you do!
One of the members of The Suspension’s was able to catch a selfie of all (well most) of us!
The concert was the perfect ending to my weekend. Unfortunately, I don’t think our next performance is until Relay for Life which is at the end of April! But considering Spring Break and Easter Break are right around the corner, I bet Relay will be here before I know it. Lately it’s been easy for me to forget that on Friday I’ll be on my way home. It feels like I just moved back in from winter break! Freshman year is going by so fast. As much as I want midterms and finals to be over and done with, a part of me still wants these next couple months to slow down at least a tiny bit! This semester has been going so well in so many ways and I’m going to try to embrace every minute I can (even amidst the papers, exams and stress!). With that being said, it’s time for me to catch some rest so I can be ready for a long day of Theology mid-term preparation. It’ll all be worth it soon enough!
Hope you all have a lovely rest of the week 🙂 especially with this lovely weather!
Catherine E. Bombard
Hi! My name's Catherine, but you can call me Catie and I'm a sophomore from Wayne, NJ here at the University of Scranton. I'm an English major, Communication minor hoping to have a career in publishing one day. I'm a member and the publicist of Octaves, an a cappella group on campus, along with being a writer and editor for The Aquinas, the student newspaper. Thanks for checking out the student blogs and I hope you enjoy hearing about my "Scranton Experience"! :)
