Hoping to replicate last year’s finals appearance, the Mosaic Whispers—Washington University’s oldest co-ed a cappella group—qualified for the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella quarterfinals again this year. The Whispers are only one of five Washington University a cappella groups entering the competition this time around, as the Stereotypes, the Amateurs and Sensasians all return to the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) stage, while the Ghost Lights will make their debut.

All five groups will be performing at one of the quarterfinals hosted on Wash. U.’s campus in early February, with the Mosaic Whispers and the Amateurs singing on Feb. 4 and the Stereotypes, Sensations and Ghost Lights on Feb. 11. Both quarterfinals will be held at the 560 Music Center on Trinity Avenue in St. Louis.

Courtesy of Elvin Hu

Rohan Khazanchi, a senior member of the Mosaic Whispers, sings a solo during the group’s performance on Friday. The group qualified for the quarterfinal round of the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella.

“Obviously, last year was a really incredible opportunity and a huge step for our group on a national scale,” Rohan Khazanchi, a senior in the Mosaic Whispers and president of the WashU A Cappella Advisory Council, said. “Coming back and competing this year, I think we really want to capitalize on the talent we have, while we still have it.”

That talent, spearheaded by the five seniors in the 19-person group, manifests itself in the group’s arrangements, according to Khazanchi. Competing at such a high level last year allowed the group to showcase their high-intensity, complex arrangements but also prompted them to more heavily consider the other aspects of performing.

“I think doing ICCAs really pushed us to take the visual aspects of our group and improve on them and make them more accessible and fun for an audience to see that we’re having fun on stage,” Khazanchi said. “We want to convince audiences [we’re having fun] with more than just our voices.”

All the groups participating in the competition echoed this desire for fun over strict competition. Multiple members across groups defined success as satisfaction with the work put in and the experience of performing, instead of as a numeric ranking.

No group may know that feeling better than the Stereotypes, an all-male a cappella group who took a break from ICCA competition last year after feelings of burn out settled in following the 2015 competition.

“We took a step back because we had always just thought we were doing ICCA. We had never questioned why,” junior and choreography director Caleb Carpenter said. “We were like, ‘We aren’t doing this because we’re having fun, anymore. We’re doing it because we want to win.’ And that’s a bad place to be, especially for a group that is driven on passion.”

To refocus and find that passion for performing again, the Stereotypes participated in an a cappella showcase held at Carnegie Hall in New York. Foregoing the ICCA competition allowed the group’s members to take a step back and let the feelings of preparation and practice at the job fade away.

“Now, we’re coming back with fresh eyes and fresh ears. We think it’ll be fun this time, where it might have been more stressful last year,” Carpenter said.

New to this realm of high-intensity competitive singing are the Ghost Lights, a co-ed a cappella group specializing in music from Broadway, television and movie soundtracks.

Founded in 2010, the Ghost Lights gradually built upon a foundation of passion for a cappella and easy listening music to grow their group’s prestige on campus.

“With each [new member] class, we’ve just been improving—year by year, semester by semester—until we got to where we are now,” Kathryn Williams, a senior and the Ghost Light’s group coordinator, said. “It kind of feels like we made it—like we finally hit the threshold of being a good/great group.”

That process—of incremental improvement culminating in a well-rounded, competitive group—is a common one within the a cappella community.

“[The Stereotypes] had that same five-year period. It just happened for us about 10 years ago,” Carpenter said. “I think this always happens when someone very passionate comes into these groups and teaches a lot of things to the base members of the group, who then are able to use that to get really good members through the audition process because that’s what it’s all about.”

For the Ghost Lights, this is just the beginning of being a good to great group on campus, and they are trying to keep their expectations low.

“Regardless of how that turns out, we are, for our group, making history for ourselves, and if I come out of that knowing that we did as well as we could at the level that we’re at, then I’m going to be happy with it,” senior and music director Gary Rabenold said.

The Sensasians, Wash. U.’s Asian-interest a cappella group, recently underwent the process as well, and after making it to ICCA semifinals last year, they could be a model for the Ghost Lights going forward.

Having tasted some level of success, the Sensasians are hungry to go further and to continue to push their group but understand the unpredictability of the competition.

“We want to advance to semis and continue to push the envelope and see how competitive we can be in semifinals, but it’s kind of a crap shoot every year,” junior and Sensasians co-director Miles Woodhull said. “We put together the best product that we can, trust the process and have fun with it.”

Members of the group credited Woodhull and his co-director, senior Eric Chao, for its rise in the competitive a cappella community, specifically citing Woodhull’s arranging and Chao’s choreography.

“Miles won’t say this, but Miles’s arrangements are really, really stellar. And I think that’s a huge reason why we’re so good right now. It makes a big difference,” new member and freshman Megan Lafferty said.

“Everyone put their faith in Miles,” sophomore member Ryan Farhat-Sabet added. “It’s really a dual effort between the two of them; Miles creates the music, and Eric does the choreography, and it works so well. They are like a dream team.”

As for the competition itself, all five Wash. U. groups have clear potential to go far, but no group may be better prepared than the Amateurs. Junior and group coordinator Maya Strod acknowledged that the group’s leadership, comprised largely of the same people as last year, has allowed the group to pinpoint areas of improvement and to take advantage of their experience to prepare more efficiently.

However, by no means does that competitive edge take away from the joy of performing for the Amateurs.

“Our motto is: ‘Do it because you love it.’ So we just try to go out there and do it for each other more than the audience or the competition,” Strod said. “We know we want to do it for ourselves and not the audience, so it’s this really nice mixture of being able to go in really prepared and having this sense of love going into the performance.”

One notable absence from the Wash. U. qualifying lineup is After Dark, a co-ed group that participated in the quarterfinals last year. After accepting their new members and discussing ICCA participation, the group decided not to apply to ICCAs and look to other competitions, in search of learning and self-growth.

Despite not directly taking part in the competition this year, sophomore Jeanette Freiberg did have some advice for the five groups as they begin to prepare.

“I think whenever you’re at a competition venue like that, one of the biggest swing factors is how into it the audience is,” Freiberg said. “If you have the audience on your side, then you have the judges on your side.”

At the end of the day, though, each of the groups, whether this is their first time competing or their shot at redemption, expressed simple satisfaction in just enjoying the art.

“We want to put a set together that we’re proud of, and that’s it,” Carpenter said. “I feel like, for most groups, whether or not they realize they’re seeking that, they really want to get off the stage and say ‘Yes, f— yeah, I poured everything into that.”

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect the correct group size of the Mosaic Whispers.