For many, good singing means strong voices that follow a basic melody. For the Mandarins, that’s child’s play.

“People should want to be watching us perform,” said Melissa Rashford, a junior music industry major and director of the group. “We just want them to have fun.”

The Mandarins, a Syracuse University all-female a cappella group formed in 1996, meet three times a week in Crouse College to perfect their vocal style and master their songs, said Dana Wise, a junior music industry major and member of the group.

“We sing anything from oldies like Aretha Franklin and the Beatles to modern stuff like Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Weezer and all things in between,” Rashford said. “We’re at the point now where if someone requested a certain song and made an arrangement of it we could sing it.”

Each Mandarin, including one member who is in Italy this semester, shares a passion and great talent for singing. Each woman shares a natural stage presence, creating a performance that audiences, and especially judges, love.

“I saw them in concert and it looked like a fun group of girls who just wanted to sing,” said Courtney Chiavara, a freshman environmental forestry and biology major in the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. “I wanted to audition because it looked as though they liked singing as much as I did.”

But before Chiavara could audition, she had to become a member of the Women’s Choir, an SU and SUNY/ESF choral group that is open to all female students.

“We find that being able to sing with the women’s choir is great because it’s ensemble singing and we get to travel around for some performances. Usually we get to do a couple songs after the choir’s performance, so it’s exposure for us too,” Wise said.

The 12 members of the a cappella singing group have branched out from simple performances to national and international competitions. They recently impressed judges by outperforming the other competitors in the Mid-Atlantic region of the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella, held last month at the University of Delaware.

The powerfully harmonious and original blend of the members’ voices and their entertaining performance won the Mandarins a second place award.

“I was extremely excited to be there,” Chiavara said. “It was great to go on to the next level.”

At the semifinals, held at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, the group raised their voices to compete against 36 national a cappella ensembles. Although the Mandarins did not win an award, they were happy to have made it further than they did in last year’s competition.

“We were so thrilled to have made it that far because it was amazing to be among those 36 other groups,” Wise said.

To compete at the ICCA, any interested collegiate a cappella signing group must submit a tape of a group performance to the organization. If accepted, each group is assigned to one of six specific regions of the country.

“We look for someone with a good ear who can pick up the parts easily,” Rashford said. “Besides that, it’s all about personality and stage presence.”

Published on March 31, 2003 at 12:00 pm