Lils to jam with Cats in Richardson

They might have different schools, genders and animals of choice, but when making sweet music is the goal, little else matters.

The all-female Princeton Tigerlilies will join the all-male Yale Alley Cats this Saturday, Apr. 3 at 8 p.m. in Alexander Hall's Richardson Auditorium for a special jam that only happens once every four years. It is titled "LilJam," or "Sing Anything."

Much work and preparation have gone into the event. Tigerlily Business Manager Dunham Townend '05 described the coordination required to make the event a success.

"I have been working with the administrative staff at Richardson for nearly a year to organize all the different aspects of the show, from the music to the advertising to the engineering work," she said in an email.

"We want our Jam to be the best it could be, so the whole group has devoted a great deal of energy to supporting and planning it," she said.

As for the Alley Cats, Business Manager Andrew Sandberg '05 said in an email, "We show up ready to have a good time."

"We do not frequently perform with other college groups, so this is an exciting event for us," he said.

The cross-school collaboration is the result of a friendship between Sandberg and Tigerlily Galen Laserson '06. They met at home, New York City, while putting on musicals in high school.

"We knew that we wanted to have a visiting a cappella group sing at the Jam, and the Lils thought it would be a good idea to have an all-male group to complement our all-female group—I'd seen the Alley Cats and heard a lot about them from Andy, so I thought that they would give a great performance and be a fun group to host," Laserson said in an email.

The Alley Cats are not the only group with whom the Tigerlilies have connections.

"We have great relationships with a cappella groups at many different universities. It's one of the best parts of being in the Lils," Townend said, naming groups from Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Penn and Dartmouth with which the Tigerlilies have performed.

She estimated the Tigerlilies sing with different groups two to three times per semester.

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Both the Tigerlilies and the Alley Cats have a cappella pride.

"We can proudly boast that all of our members wanted the Alley Cats as their first choice [during the member selection process], and I don't think that this is true of any other group at Yale. I decided to rush the Cats because I thought that they were the best group musically: best voices, best blend, best repertoire, and best arrangements," Sandberg said.

The 12-member Tigerlilies take great pride in their group's history—they are Princeton's oldest all-female a cappella group, founded in 1971 with the first class of graduating women.

"Our strong tradition sets us apart," Townend said.

She also pointed to the group's repertoire, the chance to perform and the opportunity to meet supportive alumni as formative advantages to being a Tigerlily, but placed the most emphasis on the friendships fostered.

"I think it is this closeness that makes our music what it is, because we care so much about each other and the group that we work very hard to live up to the standard that has been set for us," Townend said.

The 17-member Alley Cats spend two months each year touring domestically and internationally. This summer, they will tour Europe for five weeks.

"While touring is a lot of fun, it could potentially be miserable if I were not touring with 16 of my best friends," Sandberg said.

He described the Yale a cappella scene as "insane," with about 17 a cappella groups on campus.

But the Alley Cats manage to distinguish themselves. In addition to releasing a new CD each year, they are the only Yale a cappella group to have released a music video and are working on a second.

As the day of the jam approaches, members of both groups expressed their excitement to perform together.

"I've had such a good time preparing for it and I know we'll all just have a blast being onstage singing together— but I think the fun of it will be tripled by having friends and family in the audience," Laserson said.