SAUGUS — Tonal Chaos is on a roll.
The Saugus High School a cappella group is headed to the International Championship of High School A Cappella Northeast Semifinals in Worcester, after placing first during the quarterfinal round last month. At that round in Plymouth, two of the nine-member group also won individual awards.
Ivy McLaughlin, a senior in their first year with the group, took home outstanding solo performance. Grace Antonelli, a fellow senior, and Isabella Henriques, a junior, took home a joint award for outstanding choreography.
Tonal Chaos is coached by Jess Manuel and features students from across all four grade levels. Previously dubbed the Sachimes, the group began in 2017 under a different coach, with Manuel only taking the reins halfway through the 2021-22 school year. At the time, a group of graduating seniors approached Manuel, an English language arts coach, and asked her to lead the Sachimes, convincing her she needed only to serve as an adult supervisor.
Things escalated quickly from there.
“We kind of came together like the Bad News Bears,” Manuel said. “And this year, we just have a group that has sounded better than I expected them to and they’re really great.”
Manuel said it’s been a joy for her to watch the growth of the group’s members.
“It’s just been an unbelievable change in a small amount of time,” she said.
Each student seeking to join Tonal Chaos is put through an audition process, and the roster is then filled out with rehearsals beginning in the summertime. To fund trips to competitions, the group hosts various events, including a Halloween gig in October that features an entirely different set from what the group performs during competitions.
Competition rehearsals then begin in earnest in November, with the group gathering weekly to first select songs and work out the different vocal parts before branching out into choreography.
To make it to the semifinals, as Tonal Chaos has done this year, they first had to clear an audition round before competing at the quarterfinals. Last year’s squad faltered at the quarterfinal stage. At the semis, they’ll be competing against the nine best teams from the entire Northeast region. Only one of the groups will advance to the ICHSA Finals in Manhattan on April 28.
The stakes are high, but you wouldn’t know it from talking to Tonal Chaos’s members.
Antonelli, who joined as a freshman and now serves as the group’s president, said members are focused on what they can control headed into the semifinals on March 19.
“We’re really just trying to focus in on ourselves and we’re not trying to let the stress get to us that much,” she said.
McLaughlin was probably the most confident of the group.
“I know how hard I work and how much effort we’ve put in since the beginning,” they said.
