Swampscott chorus gets musical pointers

SWAMPSCOTT – They sing in four-part harmony, but The Harvard Callbacks showed the Swampscott High School Chorus Friday that a cappella music doesn’t have to sound like a barbershop quartet.”I think the most important thing to us is to show them another side to singing,” said Chris Heller, a Swampscott High graduate and tenor in The Harvard Callbacks a cappella singing group. “I had always done choral music? I hadn’t done contemporary music that much, and (it was hard) learning how to perform contemporary music and learning how to move on stage to that music, and arranging that music.”A cappella singing means singing without an instrumental accompaniment. But to The Harvard Callbacks and many other a cappella groups today, it is more than just singing the same words at different pitches. Heller and three other members of his group bopped in place, added choreography, and sang more “ohs” and “b-dahs” than words as they rehearsed with members of the high school chorus Friday.The visit was the second workshop between the groups in preparation for an all-school concert Tuesday. The Callbacks will perform several songs, invite the high-school singers on stage to join them in two numbers and the chorus will perform a piece on their own. It is a routine the Harvard group does at schools throughout the area, Heller said. He presented the idea to Chorus Director James Pearse – who Heller recalled was his music teacher through elementary and high school – to build enthusiasm among Swampscott students for music.”It’s a way to get the whole school involved in music? and hopefully get more people involved in the chorus,” Heller said.To prepare the high school students, a Callback representing each voice part – soprano, alto, tenor and bass – is paired with the corresponding high school chorus section to help them learn music.The goal Friday was to perfect The Callbacks’ “signature song,” the Joe Cocker hit, “The Letter.””It’s an old song and not a ton of people know it, but that makes it not feel outdated,” Heller said.He said it’s also fun. “There’s a little bit of a dancing section at the end, and they usually get really into it.”But Heller noted that it’s also the only one of the group’s songs for which they don’t have a written arrangement.”They teach it by rote – but that’s okay,” said Pearse. So he carried around a digital voice recorder to make sure that he had some record of the parts.But Pearse said the most important part of the workshops for him was to show current students how graduates can incorporate music – and performing high-quality music – into their lives after high school. And not just by further studying music. Heller, for instance, said he was studying neuro-biology. But Heller said Callback members run their own rehearsals, write their own arrangements of music, and visit an average of a school each month to do workshops and perform.”The (high-school) kids are really impressed with how good (the Callbacks) are,” Pearse said. “And they are doing this all aside from their academic work at Harvard, so they must really like to sing.”High school student Emma Hunt agreed. She said that she looked forward to The Callbacks coming to help.”They’re so talented and they have so much fun,” she said.There’s also another draw to the a cappella experience, Heller said. The group does the workshops to help fund annual tours to New York City and the Caribbean.Meanwhile, Heller said it was fun to be back at the high school performing for students and teachers.”It’s funny,” he said. “I don’t drive back home that often but it’s nice to come home for the day and see old familiar faces.”Cyrus Moulton can be reached at [email protected].