The first annual VoiceJam festival was officially a success! A weekend of enticing performances, fun-filled workshops with a cappella experts, and groups from across the world made for the perfect introduction to a cappella for Northwest Arkansas. With Deke Sharon of NBC’s “The Sing-Off” as the host, Baum Walker Hall was echoing charisma and musicality.
Professional a cappella groups The House Jacks and Voco Novo lit up the auditorium with their impressive renditions which left the audience applauding and inspired.
The opening night competition was intense! The melodious and tunefully exciting acts by the five equally incredible competitors had talent that was hard to decipher, yet each group had its own fantastic groove. VoiceJam was lucky enough to bring in the Mello Divas of Tampa, FL, the Hibernotes of Missouri State University, DeltaCappella of Memphis, TN, Snowday of Gaithersburg MD, Above The Keys of Miami, FL and The Ill Harmonic of Champaign-Urbana, IL.
Alas, the overall champions of the competition were DeltaCappella of Memphis, TN who upon winning said,
“We are extremely honored and proud to be the inaugural VoiceJam Champions! As it was our first ever competition as a group, there were a lot of unknowns. We were really pleased with the sets we put together and the competition aspect of the festival really got us amped up once we were on the stage. It was really quite a surreal moment when Deke announced us as the winner right there on stage and it still hasn’t completely sunk in that we’re going to Shanghai!”
Toney Walsh, a member of DeltaCappella told us that he had a fantastic time in Fayetteville at the first ever VoiceJam.
“One thing that sticks out to me is the professionalism and kindness of the volunteers and employees at the Walton Arts Center. They were extremely helpful and knowledgeable. The other groups were fantastic! The a cappella world is so vast and it felt great to see different types of groups represented…countless strangers came up to us, both a cappella people and non a cappella people, and told us how much they enjoyed the Friday night performance. It was great to see that level of interest from the community.”
DeltaCappella will now go on to compete at VocalAsia, Asia’s biggest a cappella festival, in Shanghai, China!