The last group exits stage left, and on comes LiaChorus. Standing among them, Jarrett Whaley breathes in and prepares himself for the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella.
Jarrett Whaley, SCH Class of 2025, is an avid singer and a lover of musicals, but this wasn’t always the case. Whaley began his musical journey in Mr. Woehr’s boychoir class. Initially, he didn’t have a large appreciation for singing. He rarely sang in his off time and frequently prioritized other ways to pass the time. The big changing point for him was the vocal workshop class he took his freshman year of Upper School, which required him to sing with the Hilltones/Laurelei a capella groups. He found the smaller group, around three girls and four boys at the time, a much more enjoyable setting, and he began to fall in love with it.
After he took the vocal workshop class, Mr. Woehr suggested he audition for the Hilltones, and he agreed. After breezing through his audition pieces, the National Anthem and “Close Up Your Door” from Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, he quickly received the go-ahead to join Hilltones.
Following his introduction to Hilltones, his love for singing began to flourish. Simultaneously, he joined the SCH Players, SCH’s musical theatre group, and began participating there.
He pushed his musical career harder and harder. His work with Hilltones grew his ability to work and tune with a team. “I think a lot of people, a lot of times, when they sing, they want solos for themselves, but [Hilltones] taught me to make sure that I got time to shine, but everyone around me also got time to shine.”
The shared spotlight was not something he had experienced earlier in the much larger Middle School boychoir, and by his senior year, he was the co-president of Hilltones. This experience grew his ability to lead, especially a group of high school students who shared a love for singing that he developed over the prior three years. This love for music carried him through some of his roughest patches in Upper School, and he enjoys music more because of this. Now, Whaley sings at Temple University for one of their co-ed (both male and female identifying) a capella groups: LiaChorus.
Collegiate-level a cappella began back in the early 1900s, with some of the first originating from Yale and their Whiffenpoofs starting in 1909, or Northwestern and their original a cappella choir starting in 1906. Since then, colleges across the country have sprouted a cappella groups of their own, many colleges having more than 3 or 4 groups active at a time. Most of these groups are student-run and rehearse later at night, so that many people who enjoy a cappella can join. A cappella groups divide between all male-identified, all female-identified, and co-ed. LiaChorus follows these standards and is one of seven a cappella groups at Temple.
While Hilltones met every G-Block for 55 minutes during school hours as a class, LiaChorus meets beyond traditional class hours, typically from 8:00-10:00 PM, two to three times a week.
Furthermore, while the Hilltones sticks mainly to concerts for SCH, LiaChorus attends various a cappella competitions, most notably the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA), where Jarrett and LiaChorus performed in the quarter finals at Drexel University.
When preparing for ICCA, Jarrett had to attend several extra rehearsals to ensure that he and LiaChorus were ready to perform in front of hundreds.
Whaley also emphasized punctuality and professionalism, “like I was saying, earlier, being punctual to rehearsals, you’ve got to be on time. And that also goes hand in hand with professionalism.”
His first experience of this was during his auditions, where his auditioners told him that being a member of LiaChorus was beyond something you do for fun, but it is a responsibility and priority.
While Whaley enjoys singing with Temple’s LiaChorus, he attributes much of his success in the group to his experiences with Hilltones. “It definitely is a big priority and responsibility, but it’s definitely manageable, and it’s so much, so much fun, you know? I would say that it’s a responsibility. It’s more of a responsibility than Hilltones was, but I was prepared for it because of Hilltones.”
Former Hilltone Eliot Villasis ’25 went to see Jarrett perform at the ICCA quarter finals at Drexel University. Villasis mentioned that the sound system that was set up for ICCA was a lot better than those set up for the different concerts that they attended as Hilltones, but most importantly of all, he noticed that Jarrett had a lot more energy while performing with LiaChorus than he did with Hilltones. Eliot believes a lot of Jarrett’s enthusiasm comes from the fact that his fellow singers do this for fun. “Hilltones is a class, right? [Students] took it for a grade, and I feel like a lot of students took it because it’s easy. In college, there’s no great incentive to take a capella. You’re doing it purely out of passion.”
Now Whaley bounces around the stage with his fellow singers, smiling and singing to his heart’s content.
