We are the Keynotes, Northwestern University’s premiere graduate student a cappella group!
Originally formed as the Catatonics in 1997, the group continues to bring Northwestern graduate students together to sing music across many genres. We perform both on and off the Evanston campus, at showhalls, street corners, and more!
We will be holding auditions and looking to add lots of new members in the 2025-2026 academic year! All graduate level students in any program at Northwestern are welcome. Please email keynotes@u.northwestern.edu for any queries. We look forward to seeing many new faces this year 🙂
Audition Info:
Thanks to everyone who came out to audition! The next set of auditions will likely be held Sept 2026.
 Time: Fall 2025 Auditions will be Sunday, Sept. 28th
Location:Â Parkes Hall Choir Room (Room 034 in the Alice Millar Chapel, Evanston)
Auditions will be broken into two segments. Each segment will have individual audition slots, but you may want to bring something to do in case we run a little behind! 🙂
Initial Audition (10:00AM):
In this part of the audition process, we want to get to know your voice as an individual! Audition sign-up sheets will be posted closer to audition days:
- Tell us your preferred vocal part and past experience.
- Sing some scales so we can tell your range.
- Sing a ~30-60 second solo. If you’d like to show off two very different styles or abilities (e.g. singing and beatboxing), you can also share two short solos. Solos can come from a wide variety of genres, such as pop, rap, musicals, or your own composition, as long as they reflect styles that you would be interested in singing with us. Feel free to take a look at our previous sets to get an idea of the genres we typically sing.
After your solo audition you will be free for a few hours while we review and deliberate. Once we come to a decision, we will contact you to let you know whether or not to come back for callbacks.
Callbacks (Same Day, Time: TBA, ~3pm):
If you have made it to callbacks, congratulations, we have decided you might be a good fit to fill out our vocal profile! In this callback, we are looking to see how well you learn music, blend, and match pitch/volume/vibe/etc. Depending on how many sign-ups we have, the callback time will likely be between 3pm-6pm. We will announce the actual time closer to the audition day.
- Everyone will meet and we will learn a simple part of an SATB arrangement. You will practice singing your preferred vocal part with the large group.
- Next, each auditionee will join current group members to sing the song!
After we hear everyone, we will begin our second round of deliberations. We will reach out in the next few days to let you know the results.
We are so excited to hear all of you! If you would like to be notified when we open the audition sign-up form, please contact keynotes@u.northwestern.edu.
