PITCH PLEASE: High Notes Continue for Student A Cappella Group Written by Christie Macomber // Photos by Casey Brown It had been a long night. There had been a cramped commute and a tiring half hour set of singing; Northeastern Sophomore Casey Matsumoto was exhausted. As she descended the steps of the stage and made her way out of the Natick Center for the Arts auditorium with the other 10 members of her a cappella group, she felt a pair of small arms wrap tightly around her waist. “You sang really good,” a young pigtailed fan whispered to Matsumoto as she hugged her. “You’re my favorite thing,” she whispered again before the young girl’s father called her back to her seat. This, Matsumoto said, is why they sing. Pitch Please, an all-women student a cappella group, was founded in the fall of 2012 by Northeastern senior Briana DeFillipis. The group, that described itself as “powerful, strong, and fierce,” quickly gained traction among the campus a cappella circuit through its fiery renditions of pop songs like Jason Derulo’s “Other Side” and Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out of Heaven.” As one of two female a cappella groups at Northeastern, sophomore Music Director Emma Carleton discussed the challenges of competing against their co-ed counterparts. “We just kind of try to be more fierce and represent powerful women, and not represent the ‘sit and be cute’ stereotype of an all-girls group,” said Carleton. “We don’t get discriminated against within the university. But in a competition setting, people definitely have lower expectations for an all-women group,” said senior Leah Campbell, the group’s business manager. “We’re proud of our femininity. We’re not ashamed to be an all-women group,” she said. The group’s sparkly gold stilettos, a trademark of Pitch Please’s stage costume, are a reflection of the “fierce” attitude that the group strives to portray. “We try to take things that we might be discriminated against for and we work with it and own it. That’s what the shoes really represent,” said Matsumoto, president of the group.
The Pitch Please’s success both onstage and off does not come without hard work. “We do a ton of work, but when we go onstage and feel like we did really well, you feel really good about yourself. And the fact that you can experience that with your friends is a really good added element,” Carleton said. While many students join extracurricular activities as a casual pastime, Pitch Please is a self-described “performance-driven group.” However, dedication to their art is inherent in many of the group members, who said that joining Pitch Please gave them the opportunity to continue singing in a competitive setting, even though they chose not to study it at the college level. “All of us sang in high school, and this group is a second chance for those who didn’t pursue music,” said Campbell. “I spent a lot of time going back and forth about whether to go to school for music. This gives me a good outlet to still do what I had wanted to do,” said Carleton. The International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella is a highlight of the a cappella competition scene, the group said. In 2013 the group won the quarterfinal competition in the Northeast district and was the only all female group to place in the top 10 of all groups in the United States. Last year, the group placed fourth in the 2014 semifinal round of the competition. Pitch Please has applied to compete at this year’s ICCA. The first round of the competition, quarterfinals, will be held at MIT. However, when it comes to competition within the university’s other a cappella groups, particularly the Nor’easters, Pitch Please members said there is only rivalry in jest. “We support each other, but there is playful competition,” said Vice President and Treasurer Anna Rose Schenerman. “We’re like siblings,” she added. Matsumoto agreed, “At the end of the day, we are all part of Northeastern and we support each other,” she said.