A cappella groups The Mar-Keys and Cadence stretched their vocal chords at the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella held at The College of New Jersey this past weekend.
The event, which served as one of the Mid-Atlantic Regional rounds of the competition, hosted 10 a cappella groups from the Mid-Atlantic region.
The Mar-Keys, an all-voices group, competed at the competition for the first time last year. According to the newly-elected president of the group, Sadie Gagliardi ‘26, the group took what it learned from competing last year and applied it to this year’s performance.
“I think we had a stronger sense of what we wanted to produce and what we wanted our final product to be,” Gagliardi said. “We were definitely more organized and we had clear goals in mind … it was really impressive.”
This was the first year competing for Cadence, the only treble-voices group on campus. Cadence president Marisa Carroll ‘25 felt that both the preparation leading up to the competition and the competition itself were meaningful learning experiences for the group.
“It was a really awesome time,” Carroll said. “The week we had together just learning everything, everybody was amazing. We bonded so much as a group, it was so much fun.”
Even though neither group won an event, Carroll said that feedback received from the judges will help Cadence improve, and she sees nothing but growth for the group moving forward.
“The aim is always to improve and to get better year after year,” Carroll said. “I think we have an amazing group this year. I think next year, it’ll continue to be amazing … Obviously, I hope we develop our vocal skills a lot more and again, incorporate the judges’ feedback, not only for next year when we compete, but just in general to improve our group and how we sound as a whole.”
Each group performed a 10-minute continuous set of songs of their choosing, including group choreography. According to Anaya Budayr ‘26, music director for The Mar-Keys, the creation of a group’s championship set is a collaborative effort. Budayr worked with assistant music director Grace Leechow ’27 to put together the set they envisioned.
“We all kind of came together and decided how we’re going to do transitions between songs, and they ended up sounding really cool,” Budayr said.
The Mar-Keys’ set included a Harry Styles medley, “XS” by Rina Sawayama and “erase me” by Lizzy McAlpine. According to Gagliardi, the set was specifically chosen to highlight the strengths of the group as a whole.
“We kind of chose songs that we thought would flow nicely with each other and would make a coherent set to do,” Gagliardi said. “We also chose the strongest songs that we thought had our strongest soloists.”
Cadence’s set included “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles, a Rihanna medley and “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall. According to Cadence’s music director Katie Lansing ‘24, the set was chosen with a beginning and end that complimented each other.
“I was really inspired by this one ICCAs performance by The Harvard Opportunes where they had three songs and then they sort of had a beginning and ending that all mashed together, so I thought that was really cool,” Lansing said.
“What we settled on was sort of a slower song, then a quicker, show-stopping song, and then our finale fun little song,” she continued. “Once I had this formula, it was just a matter of finding songs that fit well into it.”
Lansing also feels that the experience of performing at the competition boosted the group’s confidence as a whole, and is excited for what is to come for Cadence.
“I was really impressed with our group,” Lansing said. “We really came together in the end and were able to put on a gorgeous performance. I think it really did strengthen some of our members’ confidence in their ability to perform, so I hope even coming out of ICCAs that we could keep that going forward.”
