Spring Sing Profile: Resonance A Cappella

To the students that made it through auditions in fall 2013, Darryn Wong said Resonance A Cappella was new. He said the group’s existing members could not promise them anything aside from the ability to join an upcoming group that they could call a family.

Resonance will be the youngest a cappella group, by a margin of six years, to perform on Friday. Wong, a third-year psychobiology student and current president of the group, said the group had a difficult first year after its formation in October 2012.

Wong said many of the group’s members were not committed, and he himself had considered dropping the group. Following its first official round of auditions last fall, however, Resonance welcomed seven enthusiastic new members.

Nicole Dovolis, a fourth-year music history student and one of the group’s founders, said Resonance was able to attain success at Spring Sing auditions because of the passion of each student involved. She said Resonance has become a family, especially after a retreat to Big Sur that preceded Spring Sing auditions.

Dovolis said singing “Fix You” by Coldplay helped the group persevere. Mary Manuel, a third-year English student, said Resonance first chose the song because it was relatively simple to arrange.

“(‘Fix You’) always brought us back to our goal and to our home plate,” Manuel said. “Every time we went through a hardship or people didn’t show up to practice, we told ourselves to do one more push.”

Another song that Resonance has performed is “Your Man” by Josh Turner, which requires a male soloist with a very low vocal range. Generally, Resonance performs contemporary pop songs, though the group also tries to incorporate genres such as rhythm and blues, jazz, country and rock ‘n’ roll.

On Friday, Resonance’s performance will be a surprise R&B; medley. Dovolis said the arrangement will include some comical acts that involve choreography.

“Queen B might be making an appearance,” Wong said.

Despite the group’s passion, Manuel and Wong said that when they first became a part of Resonance, they did not expect that it would one day be a contestant in Spring Sing. Dovolis said she had wanted the group to participate in the show one day but did not expect it to happen before her graduation.

“I can’t think of a better way to end my time at UCLA,” Dovolis said.

Wong said he, along with several other members, considers the group to be the underdog of this year’s a cappella lineup because it is less well-known than the other participating groups.

Wong said Resonance’s status as an underdog gives other emerging a cappella groups hope.

“One year ago, if we said ‘Resonance A Cappella’ to someone, no one would (have known) our name,” Wong said.

Manuel said it could be either an advantage or a disadvantage that people do not know about the group. She said the group is currently well-established in the Greek community but will have a chance to widen its audience through Spring Sing.

“It’s hard being the newest group of the three,” Manuel said. “It’s kind of ‘make it or break it’ for us.”