On Saturday, March 16, Wright State’s newly-formed show choir, Surround Sound, won the first ever collegiate show choir competition.
Surround Sound, whose theme was superheroes, swept the awards ceremony, taking home Grand Champions, Best Choreography and Best Vocals.
They competed against the University of Cincinnati (UC) at Fairfield High School.
Rett Genatempo, music education major, is the director and creator of Surround Sound.
“I know for a lot of kids, including myself, it [show choir] was a huge outlet for us in high school and I missed having that,” he said.
He sees show choir as an escape, since performing requires leaving your problems at the door.
“I wanted to bring that to the collegiate level and just share it with anybody that I could,” Genatempo said.
Surround Sound is the only collegiate group in Ohio to have a live combo, with nine members. They also have a set and a stage crew manager.
The show choir currently has 26 members, only five of which had previously been in show choir.
Surround Sound performed at around five other competitions this season but only competed at Fairfield.
Their show included an opener, second song, ballad and closer; hero and non-hero songs were originally planned but did not make it into the show.
Genatempo graduated from Beavercreek High School in 2016 and was a member of their show choir.
He still works with the high school choir and choreographs and directs both of Beavercreek’s middle school show choirs.
“I never never dreamed that there would be competition at the collegiate level. I thought that the competing days were over, that we were really just performance-based,” Genatempo said.
However, Mark Mercer, the director of Fairfield’s show choir, reached out to UC and Wright State asking if they were interested in competing against each other.
“Any time to make history, regardless of the outcome, I’d love to,” Genatempo told Mercer.
Genatempo has had multiple high schoolers express to him their desire to come to Wright State to be in Surround Sound.
Moving forward, Genatempo has big dreams; he wants to expand Surround Sound’s stage crew, and more importantly, he wants to host a show choir competition in the Nutter Center.
“My now number one goal is I really really really want to host our own competition in the Nutter Center,” Genatempo said. “I think it would be super super cool, especially for Wright State to get that exposure to the community.”
Auditions are looking to be held during the third or fourth week of fall semester.
Fees this year were $100/person and covered transportation costs, costumes, competition fees, combo equipment and music arrangement rights.
