Peters Township High School singers to compete nationally
Think about the typical portrayal of barbershop music: four guys wearing striped shirts and matching hats, crooning “Hello! Ma Baby” and “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.”
Now update that image by about 90 years.
”Barbershop has definitely changed,” said Ryan Perrotte, the Peters Township High School choral director. “If you look at 1920s barbershop to what it is now, it has evolved, as everything else has.”
And so, rather than simply singing “Sweet Adeline,” the school’s Rowdy Rhythm choral ensemble plans a much more involved show at the Midwinter Barbershop Competition in San Antonio, Texas.
“I call it ‘choraleography,'” Perrotte said about the style of performance that can involve far beyond a quartet’s worth of vocalists. In Rowdy Rhythm’s case, 65 students are headed to Alamo City for the Jan. 19-22 extravaganza.
The group is participating by invitation, with the hosting Barbershop Harmony Society providing considerable financial support, and is part of the lineup for Friday’s Youth Chorus Festival.
“We have, basically what I like to call it, a 10-minute theatrical performance,” Perrotte explained. “It’s three songs that we’re doing, and we’ve interwoven some dialogue in between.”
The musical selections – jazz march “South Rampart Street Parade,” Randy Newman’s “I Will Go Sailing No More” and R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” interpolating Nicki Minaj’s “Fly”- are set against the thematic backdrop of rollercoaster ride before and during the Great Depression, complete with not one, but two costume changes.
Speaking of which, Perrotte is highly complimentary of the work of parent volunteers in working with the costumes for an expedient switcheroo.
Rowdy Rhythm got its start as a choir ensemble in 2014, when the high school hosted a local preliminary competition for the Johnny Appleseed District of the Barbershop Harmony Society, a national organization based in Nashville, Tenn. The Peters Township students sang “South Rampart Street Parade.”
“That was the song to start the ball rolling,” Perrotte recalled.
The following year, the group participated in the society’s international convention in Pittsburgh, making a stellar enough impression to receive an invitation to perform at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2016.
In the meantime, Perrotte formed A Cappella Adrenaline as another elective course in the school’s music curriculum for the current school year, a group that goes by the name of Room 100 – yes, that’s where the class meets – for performances.
Despite being fairly new, Room 100 was one of only eight groups chosen for November’s Kettering National A Cappella Festival in Dayton, Ohio, out of 41 that auditioned by video.
“This was a huge honor and a shock, really, because it was the first time out,” Perrotte said. “These kids did an amazing job.
“And they do it themselves,” he continued. “It’s like a musical. You teach them everything, and they’re on their own. There’s no one standing up there conducting.”
As the Pennsylvania representative for the A Cappella Education Association, Perrotte is working on organizing a statewide “A Cappelooza” for next year.
“What we’re trying to do is bring barbershop and contemporary a cappella together into a festival for kids, but we would also have pros there,” he said.
Such efforts on Perrotte’s part provide substantial opportunities for Peters Township students to put their talents on display for an exceptionally wide audience.
“The company they’re keeping through this is so amazing and educational for them,” district communications coordinator Shelly Belcher said. “The excitement the kids are coming back with, you just can’t stop them from talking about it.”