Best a cappella group evar.

So tonite was the aforementioned concert. Now, I might've mentioned once or twice how I used to be in a classical a cappella group in college. I like to think that the Madrigals were pretty darn good. Maybe not the greatest singing group ever, but pretty good nonetheless. The Chamber Chorus, for whom I am merely an understudy, make the Madrigals look like a high school choir. The music is more complex, everybody in there (with the exception of me, most of the time) can sing and sight read like a son-of-a-bitch, and the Music Director is a goddam genius.

Back to tonight's concert. A total of seven choirs, including the Chamber Chorus, sang. One of them was called the Ambassadors of Harmony. They're an all-male choir, and from what I had heard about them, I was under the impression they were mainly devoted to barbershop-type music. But I also knew that they had some 160 or so members, so I wasn't quite sure how the whole barbershop aesthetic fit in to that.

Well, it turns out that they're not just in to barbershop. Really, they're in to kicking ass and taking names, musically-speaking. These dudes made the Chamber Chorus look like the Madrigals. Besides everyone in the group being able to sing like nobody's business, they throw in a few little visual performance-type things that really grab you by the balls and kick you in the face ... again, musically-speaking. Simple things, really, like this thing they do on every choral breath where all the singers simultaneously take a little step in place. It's hard to explain, but it looks really cool. Plus, everybody looked like they were really digging what they were doing, which is not something you're supposed to do in a traditional classical-music-type choir, but these guys ain't no classical-music-type choir. To wit, they sang an arrangement of "The Man of Lamancha". Now, my first impression was that it was a bit stereotypical-college-a-cappella-esque, what with musical instrument sound effects being provided by dudes going "da da da", but they made it about 1000 times cooler and 1000 times less dorky than, say, the Jabberwocks (a group from my alma mater who are every bit a stereotypical college a cappella group) doing 'N Sync.

Anyway, check out their website. It's a shame they don't perform more often -- I think they only have two shows a year or something. But goddam it, I'm going to the next one. Even if it is Christmas-themed.