History of Counterpoint:
Provided by Alissa Vandenbark
Counterpoint Acappella was formed from a dispute within the Extreme Keys at Bryn Mawr. I
don’t remember all of the details, as it’s very 4th hand knowledge at this point, but my memory is
that one girl arranged a song for her senior solo but then quit the group, and the group tried to
still use her arrangement and have someone else sing it and she got mad because she felt it
was unfair for them to use her work (and maybe not credit her?). This was in 2007, and she and
others who quit the group started their own group, Counterpoint, which they made Bi-co in order
to get more people. Both Haverford and Bryn Mawr have multiple other high-voiced/wxmen’s
groups (various groups define themselves as either just Sopranos and Altos regardless of
gender, like us, or as a group for people who feel comfortable in a women*s space, like the
Outskirts). Like most acappella groups, we had a entrain number of traditions, although what felt
like less than many other groups. Here’s an incomplete list of what I can think of. We run the
first round of auditions like every other group, since the groups all coordinate, but our callbacks
are done all at once rather than as a second round of individual auditions, in order to get a
sense for the whole group sound. Once we have decided who to accept we go to each of their
dorm rooms in the evening (this involves a frantic run around each campus lol) and sing to them
“we want you in our group”. Also, we end each of our concerts with an arrangement of The
Parting Glass, a Scottish folk song, which ends with taking a shot (water for me, only alcohol for
those who really want it). Our numbers have been dwindling in recent years, but we continued
as best we could, until the strikes at Haverford and Bryn Mawr. There was some tension in the
group during the strike, although some good conversations did come out of that tension, but
after the strike concluded we were confronted with our failure to make the group a safe and
supportive space, and decided to disband rather than possibly cause more harm
