At 7:27 p.m. Sunday, freshman music education and vocal performance major Michael Brisentine wailed into a microphone in a mirrored room on the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s third floor.
“All the lonely people,” he sang. “Where do they all come from?”
“Wait,” senior physics major Sajeela Padder called out to the 17 other singers in the room. “Pause. Pause.”
The group members immediately broke into chatter, talking over one another and adjusting their performance choreography.
Thirty seconds later, Brisentine and the rest of the group were singing again as if nothing had happened.
For the members of Faux Paz, everything needed to be perfect. Earlier this month, the group won the title of best co-ed a cappella group at the South Region semifinals of the International Championships of Collegiate A Cappella, placing third overall and distinguishing itself as one of the top 12 groups in the country. To advance to the competition’s final round in New York City on April 28, members gathered Sunday night to record a video of their best songs to submit to the ICCA judges in hopes of being selected.
At 7:05 p.m., junior psychology major Patrick Grant adjusted his purple tie in one of the mirrors surrounding the practice room as the rest of the group warmed up their vocal chords, harmonizing on the line “poppin’ my collar.”
At 7:34 p.m., sophomore letters and sciences major Emily Morris sang a solo as she taped microphone and amplifier wires to the floor.
At 8:30 p.m., freshman letters and sciences major Abbe Dembowitz nursed a sore throat.
“I’ve never been in this much pain before,” she said to Padder.
Nonetheless, Dembowitz went back to serenading the camera with her raspy, Amy Winehouse-esque voice.
Several members said even making it past the semifinals at the ICCA was a big accomplishment, as this is the first time in 10 years the group had made it this far in the competition.
Faux Paz last made it to the top four to compete for the Grand Champion title in 2002, and last year the group lost in the semifinal round.
“This group has been through a lot, and we’ve accomplished so much in the last year,” Faux Paz President and senior chemical engineering and project management major Michael Lanzo said. “We’re a young group, with over half of us being freshmen and sophomores, and we’ve gotten looked over, so our success this year has really helped put our name out there.”
Reviewers of Faux Paz’s semifinal performance in Nashville said the group stood out due to its unique song choices. In his review on the ICCA website, Mike Chin branded the group’s style as “horror a cappella” due to the sad themes they performed.
“This [performance] was powerful, haunting and at times downright creepy, and I mean that in a wonderful way,” he wrote.
For their ICCA performance, the group sang “What I Know” by Parachute, Oh Land’s “Son of a Gun” and a mash-up of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” and Christina Perri’s “The Lonely.”
“We just pick interesting songs with good backgrounds and good solos,” said Padder, the music director for the group. “It just happens that they’re sad.”
Despite the themes of loneliness and spurned love in its performance, the group was not short on enthusiasm. By 9:45 p.m., they were eating cookies to celebrate business director and junior computer science major Tanya Dastyar’s birthday and rapping, beat boxing and wildly dancing as they worked on new songs.
And members said that enthusiasm has only intensified after their victory in the semifinals.
“Winning in Nashville was an incredible feeling,” Brisentine said.
“It was the first time I really felt a part of a group like this, just 18 kids singing on our own – we sing from our hearts and we put everything out there, in your face.”
blasey@umdbk.com
