A cappella music relies on group harmonies to create a stable and unified sound—so it’s only right that a cappella singers have a great group dynamic, and are focused on empowering both the music and the people who are singing it.
The Rancho Mirage-based Coachella Acappella checks all of these boxes. The group consists of 18 members, led by artistic director and conductor Alan Scott. You can catch Coachella Acappella perform their holiday show Text Me Merry Christmas at 7 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 9, at the Cascade Lounge inside the Agua Caliente Casino in Palm Springs.
During a recent Zoom interview with management team director Sherri North and marketing director Julie Scott—members of both the chorus and Coachella Acappella’s Party of 4 quartet—they shared some insight into how the group began.
“Our director, Alan Scott, started the organization, wanting to bring women’s chorus to the Coachella Valley, and focusing on four-part barbershop harmony,” North said. “There isn’t something like that here, so that was his passion project. He really believed a lot in giving women empowerment and voices, leadership roles and things like that. … From there, we’ve been working on growing our numbers and growing our musical abilities. We practice weekly and just continue to improve on what we do.”
Weekly practices are important in terms of both improving musically and strengthening interpersonal bonds.
“What’s really neat about our chorus is that most of the women in the chorus have never sung this type of music before,” said Scott. “Certainly, I’ve been able to harmonize in my life, but not on this level, and the a cappella style makes it even more of a challenge. … It’s really fun, having sang my whole life, to learn a new style, and we get voice lessons, essentially every week, from Alan. He’s always teaching us how to be better, how to stand, how to breathe, how to enunciate better, and where the sound is. … It’s just on a level that I never thought of before, and the education is wonderful, but I think what keeps me coming back is that we’ve become such a tight-knit group of women, and we just enjoy each other’s company. We have a lot of fun together.”
Added North: “It’s really become kind of a second family, a home away from home for us, and that escape from the day-to-day doldrums … because you can’t really think about anything else when you’re singing.”
Coachella Acappella is still a newer organization. Scott started it in 2019 … and then came COVID-19.
“We’ve only had a handful of shows up to this point, but consistently after each show, there are 10 or 15 people, most of them women, coming up to us, and they’re like, ‘Wow, this was wonderful; it was so interesting and unique,’ and they want to learn more about it,” Scott said. “We’re just making it more fun and less buttoned-up.”
Coachella Acappella is partnered with Sweet Adelines International, an organization of women singers dedicated to barbershop harmony that’s been around since 1945.
“Historically, Sweet Adelines International is made up of choruses and quartets of women who wore the same hairstyle, the same sparkly-flashy dress, the same shoes, makeup all the same color … when they performed,” North said. “… We’re helping to be part of the change as we grow with the times. We may decide that there’s going to be a color theme or a stylistic theme for our costumes for our shows, but within that, everybody gets to choose what they’re comfortable with and wear what they’re comfortable with, which is a huge change from the traditional way of seeing a cappella barbershop music.”
The modernization also relates to the group’s music choices as well; you’ll find Coachella Acappella mixing modern and classic songs.
“Instead of singing old-fashioned songs, we’re really trying to pull in newer music, because you can get arrangements for any song these days in four-part harmony,” Scott said.
Take, for example, the songs being planned for Text Me Merry Christmas at the Cascade Lounge.
“That’s the title of one of the songs that we’re going to sing, and it’s very much not a traditional holiday Christmas carol,” North said. “We do have a lot of fun with the music that we sing, and taking your fun pop music and turning it into an a cappella barbershop-style arrangement.”
Scott added that the group will perform a Mariah Carey song, as well as traditional songs with a twist. “The quartet is singing a set there, so we’ve got some more up-to-date, fun songs in our set as well. I think anyone in the crowd, whatever their background is, they’re going to enjoy the show, because there’s a little something for everyone.”
This is not the first time Coachella Acappella is performing at the Cascade Lounge. The group turned in a sold-out show of music from the ’60s there, and some of the members went there to see a show by jazz/pop a cappella vocal group m-pact.
“They (m-pact) were on another level of a cappella,” Scott said. “They do the beatboxing. They have someone who actually sounds like a drum, and someone who sounds like a bass, so it really was great to see the level of professionalism that they have raised this kind of music to. We’re a young chorus, so we have a long way to go to get to that level, but it was really inspiring to me to see how crowded the Cascade Lounge was for an a cappella performance of any kind.”
Beyond their own shows, the organization has partnered with Palm Springs Unified School District for Acachella, a musical outreach program that has the chorus going to high schools and providing a cappella opportunities for students.
“Our mission for this program is to bring a cappella barbershop-harmony-style music into the schools and teach young women what we do—to help build the legacy that we’re going to leave, and bring youth into the organization as well,” North said. “We had several girls who participated, and four of those girls stayed with us throughout the spring semester and went to compete with us at a competition called The Stars of the West in San Diego, and (their quartet) won second place. That group’s name was Palm Springs High Octane, so that was really fun for them. Since then, we’ve expanded the program, and each high school that’s participating—Palm Springs High School and Cathedral City High School—is learning some holiday music.”
North said they’d like to see Acachella at all of the valley’s high schools one day.
“We’re trying to give them the same thing that our whole mission statement is about—which is women’s empowerment, giving them a voice, letting them have leadership roles that they wouldn’t get necessarily through their schools, and learning a different style of music than what they typically have access to through the schools,” North said.
Coachella Acappella will perform Text Me Merry Christmas at 7 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 9, at the Cascade Lounge at the Agua Caliente Palm Springs, 401 E. Amado Road, in Palm Springs. Tickets for the 21+ event start at $15. For tickets or more information, visit coachellaacappella.org.
