Pitch, Please! was a finalist for the title of best collegiate a cappella group in the world — and for this year’s competition season, it knew exactly how to prepare.

Northeastern’s premier women-centered a cappella group was founded in 2012 to “challenge the standards of traditional collegiate a cappella.” Two years ago, the group won third place at the 2023 International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella, or ICCA. Pitch, Please! returned to The Town Hall theatre stage in New York City to compete in the finals April 26 with a new generation of members.

Of the 10 groups competing, Pitch, Please! was the only group consisting solely of upper voices. But having half the range of its competitors is not a limiting factor for the group’s success; in fact, it consistently earns awards for its music, including five first place awards at the 2024 Contemporary A Cappella Recording Awards. 

“I don’t think that us being an all treble voice group makes us any less capable of an all voices group,” said Chloe Cohen, a fourth-year music industry and communication studies combined major and the group’s president. “Us being there and showing people that we’re on par with everyone else there, that we fought to get here the same way everyone else did, is really cool.”

Over the past few years, Pitch, Please! has settled into its signature sound: a distinctly bright, almost electronic tone. Olivia Materetsky, a fifth-year music industry and communication studies combined major, described the group’s sound as more than unconventional — she called it “consistently weird.”

“When I joined the group, we had already shifted into this more avant-garde way of performing, and our sound was already getting to be like the funky, weird way that it is now,” said Oli Leto, a fifth-year environmental and sustainability sciences major. “We just leaned into electronic kinds of sounds and using our voices to imitate samples and weird things in music, like in electronic music, that you don’t really hear in a lot of groups. It suddenly became our main thing.”

Leto, who joined the group in fall 2020, won Outstanding Soloist in both the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds at the 2023 ICCA for her performance of “Me in 20 Years” by Moses Sumney. This year, Leto won Outstanding Soloist again at quarterfinals for her performance of “Radio” by Vienna Teng. 

Materetsky, who also joined Pitch, Please! in fall 2020, has amassed 10 Outstanding Vocal Percussion awards. Her two most recent awards were from the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds of this year’s ICCA.

As the music director, Materetsky determines what the group’s set will be, but every member is allowed creative input in making their 10 minutes on stage as tight and cohesive as possible.

“Every single person in the group being completely bought in, completely tapped into what we’re trying to do is really up there in terms of what our priorities are,” Materetsky said.

The group started its set with Sacred Harp singing, also called shape note singing — a traditional American style of choral music where cutoffs and vowel shapes are de-emphasized. Group members formed a circle around Materetsky on stage. Their voices rose like the sound of an orchestra tuning, quickly building upon each other until they reached a loud, resonant union. The group launched into “Frontier” by Holly Herndon — an experimental electronic song — with Materetsky at the center. The song’s intense dark tone finished with Leto’s belting, battle-cry-like solo. It transitioned into “Radio,” while the group accompanied her in mixed meter — a sound full of glottal stops and eerie vocals.

Bethany Davies, a second-year electrical engineering and music technology combined major, soloed the next song, “Renegade” by Styx. Davies, who co-choreographed the set with Sophie Langton, a first-year psychology and music combined major, won Outstanding Choreography at quarterfinals. “Renegade” was the set’s most upbeat song, and Davies’s rich, full-bodied tone contrasted Leto’s clear and piercing solo.

The performance ended with “You Are My Sunshine” by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell, which started slow and haunting. It built up to a euphoric moment as the group sang, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine / You make me happy when skies are gray” for the second time, creating a powerful wall of sound before returning to its original circle, with mezzo soprano Chloe Curtis, soprano Maddy Krempler and alto Langton singing the last lines. 

“It ends on this beautiful note of ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ and I think it’s really special,” Cohen said. “No matter what you experienced throughout the first few songs or what it evokes in you, you come back to this moment of sunshine, and I think most people have a really strong connection to the song or they know it at least in some way.”

Over half of Pitch, Please!’s members were experiencing ICCA for the first time, but the older members prepared the group based on their experience at the 2023 ICCA finals. Leading up to the competition, the group rehearsed for three hours every day. With an intense schedule, Materetsky said their biggest priority was maintaining the health and wellbeing of group members.

“There’s a lot of grit in this group, which is really cool, and that’s a big part of what’s made us so successful this year,” Materetsky said. “But I think two years ago, we swung too far to one end in terms of just really getting into the weeds with our set and overworking ourselves when we probably didn’t need to, to the point where there were two people that didn’t have voices two years ago when we were at finals. I think my priority this time around is making sure that everybody can actually have a good finals experience.”

Before Pitch, Please! started its set, Materetsky made a point to turn around and make eye contact with every member. Throughout the set, the group navigated the stage with Davies and Langton’s choreography, which featured a lot of sharp movements and required perfect synchrony between each member. Taking a few seconds during the calm before the storm helps to ground the group in the moment, Materetsky said.

“This group is definitely hungry to do well,” Davies said before the competition. “But I think that as long as we are all together on that stage, and as long as we’re putting out something that we’re all proud of and all believe in, I will be happy on that day, genuinely.”

The top three places at the ICCA went to The Pitchmen, Furmata and Northern Lights, but as a finalist, Pitch, Please! remains one of the top 10 competing groups in the world.

“I fear maybe a third of the audience is going to be our alumni, friends and family,” Cohen said. “We would be nothing without everybody who’s been in this group for the last 12 years and has been working for this. It’s never just about the current iteration of people in the group, it’s so much past that, and I think that’s part of what makes being here so special.”