Yale a capella group, “Out of the Blue,” came to Kent this past fall to give a workshop and a performance. The group, which is student-run, brought 12 of their usual 15 members, many of whom were non-music-major students.

The workshop was given to 20 students from the Kent a capella groups, the Kentones, and the Kentettes, and the chamber choir. The workshop included contemporary a capella, in which instead of the “instruments trying to mimic the vocal, the vocal tries to imitate the instruments,” says Mrs. Kovacs, the choir director. A capella style includes harmonizing with one another and vocal percussion, also known as beat boxing. Even though the workshop was more for “fun than serious learning,” the students still learned much from the workshop. Diyi Zhang’15, a member of the Kentones, said that he enjoyed “singing and editing modern music into a capella forms.”

The performance lasted about an hour and a half. “Out of the Blue” performed their own arrangements of popular songs from today that people were familiar with. Zhang said that “Out of the Blue” is the “most dynamic vocal group” that he has ever worked with, and the “types of music they chose to edit and perform drew the Kent school audience really close to them.”

Mrs. Kovacs said that it was “a pleasure to have ‘Out of the Blue,’” and to see “great young people with a lot of energy giving a very nice performance.”