Heritage calls: Vocal Point celebrates 20-year anniversary
Twenty years ago, Bob Ahlander tried to convince his friend Dave Boyce to start an a cappella group with him at Brigham Young University.
“I didn’t have the vision,” Boyce said. “He wanted to do something … and I thought it was too hard.”
Soon after, though, Boyce got the vision. He was living on the East Coast and saw an a cappella group sing in downtown Boston one night.
“They were just kids in jeans and T-shirts, and there was a crowd so big that the people in the back could barely hear,” he said. “When they finished singing a song, people wadded up dollar bills and threw them over the heads of the crowds at the feet of this group. I called Bob the next day, and I said, ‘OK, I get it, let’s do it.’ “
And on that day, Vocal Point, BYU’s premiere a cappella group, was born.
Vocal Point’s nine-man band has included singers from all walks of life over the years, including those who study subjects from humanities to mathematics at BYU.
This weekend, 72 of those past 107 singers will get together for Vocal Point’s 20-year anniversary alumni concert on Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Covey Center for the Arts. Three additional performances will be held, without alumni singers, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Covey.
“It’s going to be the biggest Vocal Point concert that Provo has ever seen,” said Keith Evans, a current member of the group. “We have our new album coming out, ‘Back in Blue;’ we’re kind of early releasing that at our concert. And we have 70 of our alumni coming, some from out of the country, to be at the reunion. It’s going to be great.”
Evans, a history major at BYU from Orem, said he is excited to meet the founders of the group, and he thinks it’ll be good for him to realize and appreciate even more what he is a part of.
“This just didn’t come out of nowhere,” said Evans, who arranges many of the songs Vocal Point sings now. “To see it go from a couple of handwritten flyers just posted around campus by these two students who wanted to start the group, to what it is now, it will give me a different appreciation that doesn’t come just by chance. It takes hard work and dedication, and that these guys who I’m about to meet are the ones that provided that.”
And it did take a lot of hard work from Ahlander and Boyce, who soon after saw the effect of what they started.
The two handed out fliers and tapes recorded with music they were hoping to imitate. After holding auditions, and not being able to pick between two singers, the original thought of having eight members grew to nine.
“We quickly started filling up auditoriums at BYU and after just one year we started booking performances out of state,” said Boyce, who now is the CEO of an online fundraising company. “And then we got called in to the principal’s office.”
The Music Department at BYU offered the group a chance to become affiliated with BYU, but with that came restrictions.
“They said there will be up years and down years,” Boyce said. “You could really have a thin year in terms of talent, and if you don’t have the bedrock of BYU then you might disappear, but if you are affiliated with BYU you’ll probably survive.”
After some debate, the group decided to take on the department’s request, and later, at its 10-year anniversary reunion, inducted the person who offered them that chance, K. Newell Dayley, as an honorary member of Vocal Point.
The group did the same for Hal Miller, the dean of the honors program at the time, who Boyce said encouraged them from the beginning.
Though Boyce claims he and his roommate Ahlander, who now manages Deseret Book’s music and film label, were never that good of musicians, they both loved music and dreamed of Vocal Point reaching another level.
“Here’s a funny thing, Bob and I knew each other in high school in Oklahoma, we both sang and had sung together in high school, but neither of us are really a good musician,” Boyce said. “We feel it, and we know it and we sang it. But we didn’t know anything about arranging music, we couldn’t play the piano — we knew nothing.”
So the group recruited Jill Petersen-Lex, a friend of theirs who was a piano performance major and the best musician they knew.
Since then, the group has seen many talented singers, both those who study music and those who sing because of their passion for music.
The concert will feature clusters of alumni grouped in two- to three-year groups. Each group will sing two songs, mainly songs that were Vocal Point hits at the time the group members were at BYU. Then the entire group will sing together.
“Music has always been a big part of my life,” Evans said, “and I thought this is a great opportunity to have it be more than just a passing hobby that I do but something really to invest in it and see what it can do to help other people as well.”
Vocal Point 20-year anniversary concert
Who: Vocal Point, current members and alumnisingers
When: Vocal Point performs Thursday, Friday andSaturday at 7:30 p.m., the alumni concert is Saturday at 2 p.m.
Where: The Covey Center for the Arts, 425 W.Center St., Provo
Tickets: $12 main floor, $10 balcony
Info: (801) 852-7007, www.coveycenter.org
