On Friday, Nov. 7, a cappella group the Claremont Shades hosted SCAMFest (Southern California A Cappella Music Festival) 2014 in Pomona College’s Bridges Auditorium. According to their website, this was the nineteenth year the Shades have hosted SCAMFest in order to allow local a cappella groups to “show off their vocal talents.” This year, these groups included the Claremont Shades, the 9th Street Hooligans, Women’s Blue and White, Men’s Blue and White, the K*Chords, the After School Specials, Midnight Echo, Mood Swing, the Scattertones (UCLA), Bruin Harmony (UCLA), the SoCal Vocals (USC) and the Spokes (UC Davis).

“It was nerve-wracking, but really awesome,” Laura Kent ‘17, member of the 9th Street Hooligans, said of her first SCAMFest performance. “It felt really great to perform for 2500 people. [My favorite part was] getting to perform alongside other really talented groups and getting to be surrounded by so many talented vocalists. It’s not an experience you could really get to have outside of this scenario.”

“Even though I’ve done it before, I was more nervous this year because I had to do the pitch pipe and count everyone in,” Laura Casaregola ‘17, a second-time SCAMFest performer and member of the K*Chords, said. 

She said, however, that her nerves quickly faded.

“The actual performing was so fun,” Casaregola said. “You can’t see the audience because of the stage lights, so once we started singing it really felt like it was just the fourteen of us fooling around like in rehearsal.”

With more than 2000 tickets sold this year, filling Bridges Auditorium, SCAMFest is quickly becoming a well-attended event in Claremont. Like many Claremont students, Misha Vysotskiy (HM ‘15) says he “look[s] forward to it every year.”