October 13, 2009

Tickets - SOLD OUT

The all male a cappella group, Straight No Chaser, will showcase its outstanding voices during its concert held at Cowley College’s Robert Brown Theatre Dec. 9 at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets for the concert will go on sale Wednesday. Adult tickets are $15 and student tickets are $8. Gold cards will not be accepted for this event. Tickets can be purchased by calling the Cowley College Box Office at 620-441-5570, Robin Graves at 620-441-5252, or Sue Yoachim at 620-441-5223.

Endowment Association members will receive an invitation to complete for two free tickets.

Originally formed a dozen years ago while students together at Indiana University, the group has reassembled and reemerged as a phenomenon – with a huge fan base, millions of viewers on YouTube… and a contract with Atlantic Records.

In an era when so much pop music is the product of digital processing and vocal pro-tooling, Straight No Chaser is the real deal – the captivating sound of ten unadulterated human voices coming together to make extraordinary music.

In the fall of 1996, 10 Indiana University students were handpicked by group founder Dan Ponce not only for their outstanding voices, but also for their personalities. Standing alone, they knew they had to stand out to succeed.  Purposefully avoiding the stereotype of the traditional college a cappella group, they treated themselves more like a local band that just happened to use their voices as their instruments.

Straight No Chaser began performing at a variety of campus events and sorority functions. It wasn’t long before they were headlining concerts, and within two years, they were touring nationally. They opened for artists like Lou Rawls, performed at Chicago Cubs and White Sox games, and even made their way to Carnegie Hall, where they blew away the crowd at the National Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. The original line-up of Straight No Chaser released three albums, which sold over 50,000 copies.

Straight No Chaser forged a unique style based on a combination of musical brilliance balanced with a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor.

In 1999, with college graduation looming, the members of Straight No Chaser chose their replacements – putting a plan in place to ensure that the new tradition they had created would continue on with successive generations of IU undergrads. Then, in April 2006, the unexpected happened – Indiana University decided to host a reunion concert for the original members. In honor of the event, one of the original members produced a DVD of one of their 1998 concerts, and posted clips from it on YouTube to share with the other founding members. Suddenly, concert footage that was nearly a decade old was available to be seen by millions of people worldwide. With no promotion, Straight No Chaser’s version of “The 12 Days Of Christmas” (interpolating Toto’s “Africa”) received more than 7 million views in December of 2007 alone, becoming the hottest viral video of the season.

Atlantic Records Chairman/CEO Craig Kallman happened to be among those millions of viewers. Within a few days, the entire group flew to Atlantic’s offices in New York, and a deal was in the works.

In the years since they graduated from college, the original members of Straight No Chaser had embarked on a variety of life paths – some pursuing professional careers in music and theatre, some going into other fields entirely. But suddenly presented with the unforeseen opportunity to come back together, make their major label debut, and take their music to a new level, they all agreed to seize the head-spinning moment. 

Taking off from the runaway success of “The 12 Days Of Christmas,” Straight No Chaser have released their Atlantic debut album "HOLIDAY SPIRITS", a captivating collection of Christmas songs.

The birth of Straight No Chaser’s second life is a story of talent, drive, and some very good luck indeed.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to see Straight No Chaser perform live in concert.