USC Reverse Osmosis

As the semifinals of the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella wrap up this weekend, there seemed no better time to revisit one of last year's most unlikely journeys to the big stage in New York. Reverse Osmosis, a mixed group from the University of Southern California underwent quite a journey, and The A Cappella Blog is privileged to present a part of it here.

Resverse Osmosis's public relations manager, Carl Petrillo, took the time to answer questions from A Cappella Blog co-founder Mike Chin.

A Cappella Blog (ACB): Reverse Osmosis had a successful run in this past year's International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. How did the group prepare so it could reach this level of performance?

Carl Petrillo (CP): There wasn't any particular magic technique we used. Last year was certainly a breakthrough year for our group but it really came down to the combination of several distinct factors:

First of all, RO had a firm base on which to stand. The current members are very much in contact with many alumni of the group's five year history and we have been fortunate enough to learn from their experiences. Because RO is a family that reaches beyond just the current group, we've been able to build upon our previous successes every year, attracting new talent and new opportunities that continue to help us improve.

Secondly, we had a little bit of a home-turf rivalry: RO and the SoCal VoCals (another group here at USC) have a history of friendly competition. When RO was new a few years ago, the VoCals dominated RO in ICCAs. However, the VoCals had not competed in a few years so we were excited to be in ICCAs with them again. We wanted to see if we could upset the traditional hierarchy. That our efforts paid off in last year's competition is no slam against the VoCals: they are still a tremendous group and we still learn a lot from them.

Most importantly, our current members all were willing to work hard and invest in the vision. We all knew we would have to push ourselves to rank higher than we had before--the caliber of competing groups is fantastic. That it would be difficult also convinced us that it was a worthwhile goal. We went to work: long rehearsals going way past midnight, narrowing our focus to laser-sharpness on all aspects of our three songs, soliciting the support of our awesome fans much more than we had had to before. Our officers especially worked really, really hard and helped the group see the light at the end of the tunnel when things got difficult, boring, frustrating, etc.

ACB: Your group was at the center of one of the more confusing situations in this year's ICCA competition, when, in the semi-finals, there was some miscommunication between Stanford's stage manager and ICCA's producer, and the judges missed a part of your group's set. Ultimately, both Reverse Osmosis and Brigham Young University Vocal Point were invited to move on to the finals. Can you walk me through what happened there? What was the group's reaction to this unusual development?

CP: You described it pretty accurately. We came on to perform our set at Stanford after intermission and many of us noticed as we were singing that several judges were not in their seats. You can imagine how rattling that would be but we did our best to just focus on the performance and leave that situation for later. The judges got back to their seats for our last two songs.

After the performances, our president approached the producer in charge and told her that we felt that segment of the show had been unprofessionally run and that we hoped all the groups would have a fair shake in the future. Happy to have done as well as we did even under those circumstances, we headed back to our hotel.

At the hotel, one of our members got a call from Amanda Grish, who is nationally responsible for organizing the ICCA shows. She had spoken with all the judges who had missed our first song and asked them, "If RO's first song had been really strong, could they have possibly taken first place?" Those judges unanimously agreed that it was possible. Based on that information, Amanda decided to invite RO along to the New York finals as co-champions. That was about the time we started yelling and hugging each other.

ACB: In the opening round of competition, Reverse Osmosis not only won, but swept the special awards, and accomplished all of this in front of a "home field" audience. How did it feel to achieve such success with your friends and fans looking on?

CP: It was unreal. That entire awards ceremony felt electric and we just got more happy and disbelieving as the good news kept coming.

ACB: What would you say is the most important element to having a successful collegiate a cappella group?

CP: I think the members have to share the same vision for the group and believe in that vision enough to work for it. When that many people are pushing in the same direction, awesome things can happen.

ACB: What was the most challenging song for Reverse Osmosis to successfully perform during your tenure with the group, and why?

CP: We do an arrangement of Ben Folds Five's "One Angry Dwarf (and 200 Solemn Faces)." One of our alumni who has been a huge boon to the arranging history of RO gave it to us two years ago and it was significantly more technically difficult than anything the group had ever done before. I don't remember exactly how long it took us to learn it but it was around two months. The growing pains involved in learning that song really tempted us to despair but, having learned it, gave us confidence to tackle pretty much anything our arrangers might throw at us from then on.

ACB: How does Reverse Osmosis go about recruiting members for the group? What does the audition process look like?

CP: The recruiting/audition process is something that is in many ways constantly in transition. We haven't really found the magic formula that we feel both gives us what we need and makes the process as pleasant as possible for the auditionees--that's one of the group's primary goals right now. Some aspects are relatively constant, though. We always advertise like crazy the week before, including singing at a kind of A Cappella 101 show in which all the USC groups perform one or two songs and plug their auditions. We hold auditions on campus--they generally last no more than five minutes and include some combination of an a cappella solo, scales, tonal memory exercises, and sight-singing. We then invite those we think might be the right people at the right time to a callback party at our house so we can get to know each other personally a little bit. Finally, we hold callbacks at our house (which involved learning a section of one of our songs and blending with different combinations of the current group) and make our decisions from there.

ACB: What drew you, personally, to collegiate a cappella?

CP: I was in a men's group back in high school so I was already sold on the camaraderie, musical fulfillment, etc. that comes from being in an a cappella group. My only question was which group I should join--RO has been the most fulfilling aspect of my college career.

ACB: If you had to describe one goal that you have for Reverse Osmosis in the coming year, what would it be?

CP: Now that RO has had this year of amazing growth, I would like to see RO learn to operate at this more professional level more comfortably. We've discovered that we can do amazing things together--the next step is to do them without almost going crazy. A lot of that is wrapped up in looking back over the past year and seeing what worked and what didn't. That involves figuring out how best to make decisions on everything from repertoire to gigs to new members, how to use our members' time most respectfully--pretty much how to make the group's necessary bureaucracy as transparent as possible. That also includes a general push towards greater professionalism in the face we show the world--making the auditions process as painless as possible, being a pleasure to deal logistically and financially, and concretely expressing our gratitude to our fans as much as possible.

ACB: What can we expect to see from your group in the future? Any new songs in the works? Any upcoming gigs of note?

CP: The exciting news in RO-Land is that we released our new CD this with a concert on the USC campus. We are really proud of how the album turned out and the growth it represents for the group. If readers are interested, they should check out our website (www.uscreverseosmosis.com) for details. We're also hosted the Southern California ICCA in January.

ACB: Is there anything else you would like to share with the readers of The A Cappella Blog?

CP: Only that we'd like to thank those of you reading this who have supported our work in the past and that, if you're not a fan yet, we hope you're willing to check us out. See what we've got going at our website (again, www.uscreverseosmosis.com). Check out some of our new recorded songs on our MySpace page (www.myspace.com/reverseosmosis). I mentioned earlier that the RO family is not limited just to the current group--nor is it limited to those who have been in the group. We really believe that the RO family is comprised of anyone who cares about RO and we know that the group's success is intimately linked with the size and well-being of that entire family. It's really a wonderful thing to be part of and we hope that you'll give it a chance.