Please Don't Stop The Music

With competition season right around the corner, I had the opportunity to meet with the Executive Director and Assistant Executive of one of UCF’s a capella groups, Gemini Blvd. Gemini Blvd was established in 2009 and is UCF’s first award-winning, all-gender a capella group. As they’re in the process of prepping for the upcoming quarter-finals competition, members Nellie Rettig and Sharanya Khubchandani sat down with me to catch me up on all things a capella!

We started the interview by learning a little bit more about Gemini Blvd, otherwise referred to as GB. GB is one of five a capella groups at UCF that also competes at the ICCA (which is the International Championship for Collegiate A cappella for anyone who is not a Pitch Perfect fan)! As an a capella group, GB performs musical numbers with microphone choreography without accompaniment of any instruments. The group currently consists of 10 members, bringing a strong enough sound to the group just in time for competition! In addition to competing, GB also travels and performs gigs, spreading the love for this musical style.

Junior Nellie Rettig, shares how she initially came to the group that can now be referred to as a second family by many members.

“Before GB, I did theater in high school and chorus, very similar to a capella,” Rettig said. “I did know of some other people who did collegiate a capella. So, the summer before my freshman year of college I joined! I liked the sound of the group when I was introduced to them and their professionalism. After being in this group for three years now, I still love our sound along with the songs we perform because they highlight how we present ourselves!”

Rettig went on to mention how “Everyone within GB adds their own personal flavor to the group, which is one of the things that I love about it as a percussionist within our group. Also, despite being in a co-ed group, there is a good amount of female representation which is empowering!”

As I asked about what her favorite part of Gemini Blvd was, Rettig continued to say “I’ve learned so much throughout my time here and I continue to learn new things every day! Whether that be new leadership skills, how to deal with different people and organizations or even how to create a cool environment which comes in handy as GB’s Executive Director.”

Newcomer Sharanya Khubchandani is a freshman, soprano-soloist and Gemini Blvd’s Assistant Executive, which was Rettig’s prior position.

She explains how she ended up becoming a part of GB’s family, “I decided to participate in their fall rush this past year and ultimately went with Gemini Blvd because of the people I met during rush and all of their welcoming vibes. I’ve been a performer my whole life, but I never did a capella,” Khubchandani said. “However, I did know that I wanted to find a way to continue performing in college, so I’m glad I was able to join GB. I love how our group became so close so fast, the warm energy shared within us all makes it feel like we’ve been friends forever. I also really appreciate how our group is run because everyone has a voice in the group and gets to feel represented. A perfect example of that is how we chose our setlist songs. Nellie and I’s favorite genres to sing are pop and R&B which is perfect because these are the genres that GB normally compete with.”

Quarter-finals of the ICCAs are approaching as the group cracks down with rehearsals.

“11 groups this year will be competing in quarter-finals with 4 groups being from UCF. Since only 2 groups will be moving on to the Semi-Finals, the stakes are high! We’ve fortunately been to the Semi-finals before so it would be nice to return, but the ultimate goal would be to make it to Lincoln Center in New York for the final competition!” Rettig shared with us before going into detail regarding the rehearsal process. “Back in early December we decided on our songs and started preparing so that when we came back for Spring semester we would be ready to start rehearsals. We typically rehearse Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays where we’ll have one solely for music run by Lizzie who arranged our set, one for choreography run by Taylor and Emma who choreographed and then one where we’ll run everything full out.”

Khubchandani continued “Our creative director Taylor Caruso, our music director Lizzie Valladares and our assistant creative director Emma Ferguson are such an important part of our rehearsal process as they help us get everything together perfectly. When it comes to picking our setlist, we try to do something different every year. We would like to have contrasting songs for our set that can tell a story through emotion but keep a central theme.”

Both Rettig and Khubchandani agree they want to be able to see performance coming through the songs. In fact, this is one of the ways that they’ll be able to tell (and feel) that they’re performance-ready.

“We will typically have alumni reviews, where our old members will come back to watch before competitions and we will also have other groups on campus come to give us constructive criticism,” Rettig said. “While running our set, we remind each other to give face and emotion when we’re performing. By the end of the set, we’ll all have this shared feeling where we know we’re competition-ready.”

We wrapped up our conversation by talking about Rettig’s and Khubchandani’s favorite things about Gemini Blvd and hearing all of the sweet things they had to say was like music to my ears.

“One thing that specifically comes to mind is our ‘Cuff It Count’ from last year. Whenever we were together we would play the song ‘Cuff It’ by Beyonce at random times sporadically and keep track of the amount of times we would play it. The count ended up getting high and I just think it was really funny to have that as a little bonding experience because all of us having a love for music has brought us together.” Rettig said.

Khubchandani followed as she shared another memory specific to GB. “As rehearsals are typically pretty long, we can tend to get worn out by the end of them but whenever our music director senses that the energy is low, she yells ‘woooo!’ to bring the energy back up and it always works! We call it the ‘Lizzie woo’ and it’s been a great way to raise our motivation to keep working hard at rehearsal.”

Gemini Blvd currently has 10 members but they are always looking for new voices. They currently are holding rolling virtual auditions which can be scheduled through the link found in their Instagram bio @geminiblvd or linked here. If your love for music is as big as Rettig’s and Khubchandani’s, I would consider giving auditions a go.

Like Rettig mentioned, “This group brings out the best parts in all of us!”, so why wouldn’t everyone want to be a part of something so aca-awesome!

Strike Out,

Writer: Olivia Wagner

Edited by: Delaney Gunnell and Reanna Haase

Photographer: Elizabeth Fernandez

Orlando

Olivia Wagner is a copy editor and content writer for Strike Magazine Orlando! This is proudly her 3rd semester with the Strike brand and she is excited to continue growing with them! In addition to writing, she loves acting, dancing, and updating her personal blog which can be found here! As an archetypal cancer, she loves crying to both movies and music. Her freetime consists of blasting Taylor Swift and trying to write the next best sitcom. You can reach her at ol408239@ucf.edu and @livwgnr on all socials.

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