Hosting a coffeehouse at Cholmondeley's last Friday and performing for the Fall Fest variety show last Saturday, a cappella group Rather Be Giraffes have proven to be a bunch of busy animals. Two of the members of the group shared their experiences with justArts about performing and organizing musical events. JustArts: What have been some new and exciting developments with Rather Be Giraffes this semester?

Elena Korn: We have two awesomely talented newbies in RBG this year, and we are really excited to incorporate them into our existing and new music. Also, we are debuting a ton of new songs, which is always super exciting for us!

Jeremy Weinberg: Like Elena mentioned, our two newbies, Erin Roper '14 and Rachel Benjamin '14, are fantastic and super funny (they are both in Boris' Kitchen)! RBG has also been performing a lot, recently going off campus for an a cappella fest at Bentley and being invited to other colleges for their concerts!

JA: How would you define RBG's musical style?

JW: RBG sings anything and everything, which always makes for an interesting mix of songs in our repertoire. It's always fun because each song has its own character, and each arrangement offers something different for the audience to listen to (and for us to sing and dance to)!

JA: Without a genre defining trait how does the group decide upon songs to sing?

EK: Our music selection process is very specific to the soloist-each group member picks one or two songs that we think a certain soloist would sound great singing, and then we narrow the list down to about 5 songs. After that, the soloist learns the five songs and auditions them for the group. Whichever sounds best, we choose!

JW: Elena summed it up pretty well. We each pick one or two songs that we propose for the soloist, and they bring in up to five. We then narrow that long list down to 5 songs that they then sing the verse and chorus from each, and we decide from there. We pick songs that we know the soloist can do well, but also songs that we will have fun singing and arranging and that can add something different to our repertoire.

JA: How did the Coffee House go this past week? Did you arrange for all the groups in the surrounding area to come too?

EK: Our Coffeehouse was a major success. We invited two really fun all-female groups from Haverford and Boston University and they were awesome! We actually spent time with the groups afterwords [sic] which was pretty hilarious--imagine [an] entire Mod filled with like 35 acapella [sic] singers-you could barely hear the actual music over all the harmonizing. Also, my parents were here for parents weekend and they really enjoyed seeing the different groups!

JW: The coffeehouse was great! Sophie Golomb, our events manager, did a great job planning everything. Right when we decided to do this event, she made a list of a bunch of groups to contact, and we ended up with two great girls groups from BU (Aural Fixations) and Haverford (Outskirts). They were so much fun to listen to and had a lot of talent (and were great to socialize with afterward)! The parents and students that attended seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. We also raised some money to go to Heifer International, a great fund that helps families in third world countries, so it was an all-around success!

JA: How was being a part of the Fall Fest variety show?

EK: The Fall Variety show was super fun. I had never gotten a chance to see some of the other groups that performed and some of them blew me away! Also, in one of our newer songs, the soloist drops the F-bomb which apparently offended one of the older audience members. Its [sic] cool though, RBG is provocative and edgy to the very end.

JW: It is always great to be a part of events that show off so many different aspects of the Brandeis arts scene. There was awesome dancing, hilarious comedy, and great music sung by some of the a cappella groups on campus. RBG sang Scar (soloed by Sophie Golomb '13) and Santeria (soloed by Rachel Copel '11). Santeria was debuted last week, so it was great to show off one of our newest additions to the RBG repertoire for the parents.

JA: What is up next for RBG?

JW: RBG is always busy! We are preparing more songs to sing and entertain the fans with, as well as performing at coffeehouses, possibly going off campus a couple more times to sing with other groups, and starting up recording our next CD! Our semester show is our big ending to the semester, and is going up on Sunday, December 5th at 4 pm in the new Mandel Center Atrium! For specifics on performances, go to the "Shows" link on our website (http://people.brandeis.edu/rbg/shows.html).