The Princeton Footnotes have gone Hollywood: The all-male a cappella group will be competing in the fourth season of NBC’s The Sing-Off, vying for $100,000 and a Sony Music recording contract. The show will debut Dec. 9.
Former Footnotes president Sammy Schatz ’13 told PAW that the group auditioned via video and received an invitation from producers in June. With members spread out around the country over the summer, they had to learn new songs on their own, sharing music by email and briefly joining together on campus for rehearsals before recording the competition in August.
The Footnotes and the University of Kentucky’s Acoustikats are the only collegiate groups among the 10 ensembles competing this year. In previous seasons, Yale's Whiffenpoofs and the Dartmouth Aires have competed on the show; the Aires placed second in season three.
Schatz said that one of the main challenges of The Sing-Off was the choreography, which was “a lot more intense” than the basic moves the group might employ in a concert or arch-sing.
The reality show is scheduled for a seven-episode run that spans two weeks, with a two-hour finale Dec. 23. The singers are judged by a panel of recording artists — Jewel, Ben Folds, and Shawn Stockman — and groups are eliminated at the end of each show.
“For us, it was a majestic opportunity,” said Schatz, who gave no hints about how the group fared in the competition. “I just hope we make everybody proud.”