Walk down the halls of any Berklee building and you're likely to hear music: guitar riffs, piano scales, an ensemble mid-rehearsal. But sometimes, usually in the evening, you might hear a different sound: a chorus of voices from one of Berklee's five student-run a cappella groups. Beyond the tight harmonies and clever names-Pitch Slapped, the CharlieChords, On the Vox-all five groups strike a more foundational chord: community.
I found Treble Threat by happenstance in my first year, says Allee Flanigan, now the director of Berklee's only all-woman/nonbinary a cappella group. I met people who wanted to support me, and that was huge. I felt like I was important to the community. A composition major from small-town Indiana, Flanigan has helped take the group to a new level musically and competitively, culminating in its recent second-place win at the first round of the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) Northeast Quarterfinals, held at Berklee in February. Flanigan also won an Outstanding Soloist award for her performance on Money/Greedy, and the group's assistant director, Snehal Pandey, received an award for her arrangement of their set.
It's about creating a space for women on campus, says Flanigan, whose responsibilities as director include leading rehearsals, planning trips and competitions, and maintaining group morale. We ask a lot of our members: we rehearse about seven hours a week, and more when we're gearing up for a competition. And we spend a lot of time together outside rehearsals, too.
The camaraderie is evident in the group's performances, which draw together elements of pop, hip-hop, and R&B. There's a huge responsibility when you're doing music people know, says Flanigan. Treble Threat's repertoire includes songs from their seven-track EP, Shatterproof, which they recorded, mixed, and mastered in Berklee's on-campus studios. The EP features tracks such as Ariana Grande's God Is a Woman and Little Mix's Woman Like Me.
Watch Treble Threat perform Woman Like Me:
While most of Berklee's current a cappella groups were founded in the early 2010s (several members cite the success of the 2012 film Pitch Perfect as inspiration), one group has been around for the long haul. Pitch Slapped was founded in 2006 and remains an award-winning group with an unusual amount of notoriety for a college a cappella ensemble. The group doesn't compete anymore, says professional music major Samuel Dantowitz, the group's business manager. That's actually kind of cool, he says. It's freed us up to do lots of different things.
Pitch Slapped does corporate events and school workshops, as well as performing at benefit concerts and touring internationally. The winners of two ICCA championships (2011 and 2014), they've appeared on NBC's The Sing-Off and have been featured on America's Got Talent. But like the members of other groups, Dantowitz (a former member of Upper Structure, another Berklee a capella group) says his favorite part is the community.
Ive ended up meeting some of my best friends through this group, and we genuinely look out for one another.
-Shannon Sperl, president, On the Vox
We're creating a space for our members to feel welcome, and to be the fullest version of themselves, says Dantowitz. We want to challenge ourselves and impress our audiences, of course, but we want to build a community while exploring our artistry together.
Relationships are also key for coed group On the Vox, says the group's president, performance major Shannon Sperl. I got involved in On the Vox during my first year at Berklee, she says. Ive ended up meeting some of my best friends through this group, and we genuinely look out for one another.
Sperl and her fellow group members rehearse three times a week, working on powerhouse arrangements of pop songs such as MIIA's Dynasty and Kelly Clarkson's I Don't Think about You. Founded in 2014, On the Vox has won multiple awards at ICCA and other festivals, including Haunted Harmonies in Salem, Massachusetts. We're hungry for success, says Sperl, and we're willing to work extremely hard to get there. But, she says, the group is able to balance its strong, competitive, professional ambitions with a fun, easygoing vibe. They competed in the second round of the ICCA Northeast Quarterfinals, placing third and taking home two special awards: Outstanding Choreography, given to Starr Desmond, and Outstanding Soloist, given to Tyler Nordin for his performance on Sam Smith's Dancing with a Stranger.
Watch On the Vox's cover of Dynasty :
While competition is an important element for several of Berklee's a cappella groups, they also do other types of gigs, such as corporate events and school visits. I love working with high school students, says Tyra Jenkins, a music business/management major and president of coed group Upper Structure. You build so many relationships that way. One of the group's current members, Pablo Lopez, has known about Upper Structure since the group performed at his high school, and now serves as its vocal percussionist.
Upper Structure stands out for more than its musical prowess: the group's songs focus on social justice themes and contemporary issues. At the 2020 Los Angeles A Cappella Festival (LAAF), the group's winning set featured songs about mental health, including Bigger by Beyonc . Last year, they produced a music video of Todrick Hall's Water Guns to draw attention to gun violence in the U.S. We all really care about these issues, says Jenkins, who has been involved with the group since her first year at Berklee. The group has released two albums, Bridges and Second Wind, both available on Spotify.
Watch Upper
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Walk down the halls of any Berklee building and you're likely to hear music: guitar riffs, piano scales, an ensemble mid-rehearsal. But sometimes, usually in the evening, you might hear a different sound: a chorus of voices from one of Berklee's five student-run a cappella groups. Beyond the tight harmonies and clever names-Pitch Slapped, the CharlieChords, On the Vox-all five groups strike a more foundational chord: community. 
