Submitted by William Alzaher
On Saturday, February 2, 2019, Green Brook Middle School’s acapella group, Alzapella, participated in an acapella festival called Jersey Harmony Explosion. The full day event focused on acapella music with a special attention on the barbershop style. From 8 a.m. – 10 p.m. students took part in workshops, masterclasses, and rehearsals. The night ended with an amazing concert featuring High School, Collegiate, and Professional acapella groups, and of course Green Brook’s very own Alzapella.
Amongst the professional groups were GQ, Newfangled Four, and Gimme Four. All of these groups are incredible, internationally recognized quartets and they spent the day teaching the young singers about acapella, barbershop, and performing in general. The head clinician of the festival was Deke Sharon. Deke is referred to as the Godfather of acapella and has arranged for and music directed projects like the “Pitch Perfect” movies, “The Sing Off”, “Pitch Slapped”, and the broadway musical “In Transit” to name a few. Green Brook vocalists have been fortunate enough to sing for Deke twice now over the last three years. The first time was at the Highlands Acapella Festival with Green Brook’s select women’s choir Green Brook Singers. After they sang an acapella arrangement of “Bring Me Little Wayer Silvy” with body percussion, Deke was so impressed with their performance that he live streamed them to his Facebook page. Within a few days the video had almost 40 thousand of views!
The whole experience inspired Mr. Alzaher (the 4th year director of choirs and orchestra at GBMS) and the Green Brook singers to start a contemporary acapella group of their own. The group has already received many awards and accolades including being select to go to the State Teen Arts festival every year they’ve participated, being the featured middle school group at multiple festivals and events, and being honored by the Green Brook Board of Education for their dedication and commitment to excellence in their craft.
At Saturday’s festival, students were once again honored to workshop with Deke who was really the inspiration for the creation of Alzapella in the first place! He once again was blown away by the group and decided to live stream them again! The video already has over 22 thousand views between Instagram and Facebook. To hear Alzapella sing What About Us by Pink! search for Deke Sharon on Facebook or instagram and like/share the video!
If you want to hear Alzapella live, they’ll be performing at the Highlands Festival and the GBMS spring concert in May. You can also search up Alzapella on YouTube.
(above) Alzapella, Green Brook Middle School’s acapella group, at the acapella festival Jersey Harmony Explosion.
Photo by Green Brook Public Schools
