The lowdown on the Techtonics win

The Techtonics, Imperial College Union’s all-male a cappella group, have made international history by becoming the first British group to win the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella.

The International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella, or ICCA for short, is a massive competition of some 340 entrants, spread across the north of America, split into 8 regions, with one more final region in the UK. Only 10 groups progress to the final on Broadway in New York, and last weekend, representing Imperial and the whole of the UK, we were one of those teams.

The journey for us started back in March 2015, when the then-current, and future MDs, Alex Moore and Ehsaan Shivarani, started trying out arrangements, discussing what songs to pick for next year’s competition. In short, each team has 12 minutes to present their wares, doing whatever they want. Soon, a set of all British songs had emerged, and we were ready to rehearse them. Roshani Abbey, a fellow a cappella and musical theatre enthusiast, joined our crew shortly after starting rehearsals for bits of our 4-song set.

In February and March, the competition rounds began. We passed our way through the quarter-finals, and earned our place in the semi-finals in London. It came as a complete surprise when we beat off all other UK groups, and got the chance to compete on Broadway.

Getting there would be no easy feat – with an August Edinburgh fringe show already paid for, we would have to raise another £6k to get flights to New York. Not only that, but the finals would occur right in the middle of exams for most of our members. Regardless, the group persisted, even through one member’s glandular fever a week before the competition (wrecking his singing voice), and flew out on Friday evening, landing shortly before midnight in JFK airport.

The first night, in “something of a murder motel” was surprisingly pleasant, managing to bag a free breakfast the next morning. With a troublesome journey into Manhattan from the motel, we barely made the theatre in time for the intro brief before soundchecks. With our speedy 20 minute soundcheck done, we spent the rest of the day absorbing what we could of the beautiful New York scenery, including a warm up in nearby Central Park, before heading back to the theatre. Disaster struck when 3 of our members, bass, beatbox and a soloist, got stuck in the elevator on their way to the green rooms one hour before we were to open the show. Seconds after the call was made that The Techtonics should be moved to a later slot, the trapped singers emerged, and suddenly it was all go. 15 minutes later, we were ready in the wings, about to sing our hearts out for the last time.

I’ll be honest, trying to describe the experience of the performance succinctly completely evade me. Opening the last round of a huge competition to a sell-out, 2800-strong, a cappella-frenzied audience was one of the experiences I will count as the best in my life. To put things in perspective, the Beacon Theatre is larger than every single theatre in London. And the whole audience was whooping and screaming like only an American crowd can.

The next 4 songs went by in a blur, with my recollection of the Madeon intro jumping to Queen’s Bicycle Race, then Sam Smith’s Lay Me Down, and finally to The Beatles I Saw Her Standing There only existing because I had practiced it hundreds of times and knew each chord progression like the back of my hand. I remember snippets of a quick debrief in our green room following our breathless exit from the stage, with some well-wishes to the other groups occurring somewhere in between.

I won’t bore you with the details of the other sets from the US groups, suffice to say they were slick and impressive, all of them. when we returned to the stage for the announcement, we were met with cheering, applause, and general elation that defied belief. The huge trophy, and with it, the international championship of collegiate a cappella, was ours.

Since then, it has been a whirlwind of activity. We were invited to go on the radio the next morning, and have had endless tweets, some from producers and actors (Skylar Astin, ‘Jessie’ from Pitch Perfect!), and trying to get the trophy back home on the flight was a nightmare. Hopefully it will be on display somewhere in college soon. We’re proud that for the first time in the competition’s history, we’ve brought the win back to the UK.