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 2024-2025 academic year! All graduate level students in any program at Northwestern are welcome. Please email jananhui2025@u.northwestern.edu for any queries. We look forward to seeing many new faces this year 🙂
Upcoming Concert Info:
TBD!
Audition Info:
Time: Fall auditions closed! Look out for Spring or Fall next year 🙂
Location: Parkes Hall Choir Room (Room 034 in the Alice Millar Chapel, Evanston)
To help you prepare, the auditions will involve the following:
- We’ll do a few warm-up scales as a group with all auditionees.
- If you haven’t already, you’ll fill out a quick interest survey that asks about your info and music experience.
- We’ll learn a simple part of a song in SATB and you will practice singing in your preferred voice part with the large group.
- Each auditionee will be called in individually to join current group members to do a quick warm up and sing the song. We’re looking to see how well you learn music and blend and match pitch/volume/vibe/etc. We would recommend bringing something to do while waiting for your turn, but the wait shouldn’t be too long and we will look at your time slot needs in the survey! 🙂
- You’ll sing your prepared ~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.
