Princeton Tigertones
Encyclopedia
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
group from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. The group was founded in 1946 (legend has it, under a table in the "tap room" of Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
's Nassau Inn
Nassau Inn
The Nassau Inn is the only full service hotels located in downtown Princeton, New Jersey. The inn traces its lineage to 1756, when an inn of the same name was built by Judge Thomas Leonard...
), and since then has produced thirty albums. The Tigertones, known informally as "The Tones", draw from a repertoire of nearly a hundred songs that have been arranged almost exclusively by members of the group, and which range in genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
from traditional choral arrangements through barbershop quartet standards, modern jazz, the "American songbook
Jazz standard
Jazz standards are musical compositions which are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive list of jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be...
", and contemporary pop culture hits.
In addition to extensive performing on Princeton's campus, the group frequently tours the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the world, and has traveled across the United States, Europe, and Asia to perform in such storied venues as New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, London's Barbican Centre
Barbican Centre
The Barbican Centre is the largest performing arts centre in Europe. Located in the City of London, England, the Centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhibitions. It also houses a library, three restaurants, and a conservatory...
, and aboard Cunard Line
Cunard Line
Cunard Line is a British-American owned shipping company based at Carnival House in Southampton, England and operated by Carnival UK. It has been a leading operator of passenger ships on the North Atlantic for over a century...
's Queen Elizabeth 2
RMS Queen Elizabeth 2
Queen Elizabeth 2, often referred to simply as the QE2, is an ocean liner that was operated by Cunard from 1969 to 2008. Following her retirement from cruising, she is now owned by Istithmar...
. The Tigertones have performed before heads of state including President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
and the late Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
, and, in 2010, performed twice at the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
for an audience including President
President
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...
Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
and First Lady
First Lady
First Lady or First Gentlemanis the unofficial title used in some countries for the spouse of an elected head of state.It is not normally used to refer to the spouse or partner of a prime minister; the husband or wife of the British Prime Minister is usually informally referred to as prime...
Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is the wife of the 44th and incumbent President of the United States, Barack Obama, and is the first African-American First Lady of the United States...
.
The Tigertones have been profiled in dozens of publications, including a 1995 article in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
and Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine. They are historically notable for being the first collegiate a cappella group to release an album in compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
format (1989's "Ba Da Ya Ba Da.") and the first collegiate a cappella group to have a page on the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, dating from March 1994.According to a search of rec.music.a-cappella and alt.music.a-cappella newsgroup postings from 1991 to 1994 http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=(%22WWW%22+OR+%22web%22+OR+%22webpage%22+OR+%22home+page%22+OR+%22website%22)+group%3Arec.music.a-cappella&start=20&sa=N&scoring=d&lr=&safe=off&num=10&as_drrb=b&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1991&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=6&as_maxy=1994&, http://groups.google.com/group/alt.music.a-cappella/browse_thread/thread/60a74fbc31b02f6f/bbc34e933ca7f2d4?lnk=gst
The group's history and list of accomplishments may be viewed at www.tigertones.com.
History
Founded in 1946 by a group of undergraduates seeking an alternative to the existing opportunities for vocal performance on campus, the Tones were originally organized by Henry G. Parker '48 and found quick and enduring success on campus. The group's inaugural arrangement was the barbershop quartet standard "Coney Island BabyConey Island Baby
Coney Island Baby is the sixth solo album by Lou Reed, released in 1975. It is also the title of a song on that album. The name presumably refers to the Excellents' 1962 doo wop song of the same name, and/or a 1924 Les Appleton barbershop music song of the same name...
", and other early arrangements included Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
's Alexander's Ragtime Band
Alexander's Ragtime Band
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" is the name of a song by Irving Berlin. It was his first major hit, in 1911. There is some evidence, although inconclusive, that Berlin borrowed the melody from a draft of "A Real Slow Drag" submitted by Scott Joplin that had been submitted to a...
and a Princeton University anthem known as "The Orange Moon."
In addition to becoming a staple at formal parties at the Seven Sisters
Seven Sisters (colleges)
The Seven Sisters are seven liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that are historically women's colleges. They are Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College. All were founded between 1837 and...
, women's colleges affiliated with the all-male Ivy League
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
, the Tones began international touring in the 1950s with repeated visits to the island of Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
, affectionately known to members of the group as "'Da." They appeared for several years running alongside The Talbot Brothers of Bermuda
The Talbot Brothers of Bermuda
The Talbot Brothers were a musical group based in Bermuda that were among the most popular calypso performers of the 1950s. They were brothers Archie , Austin , Bryan, a.k.a. "Dick" , Ross, a.k.a...
, and adapted some calypso
Calypso music
Calypso is a style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago from African and European roots. The roots of the genre lay in the arrival of enslaved Africans, who, not being allowed to speak with each other, communicated through song...
tunes for the 'Tones repertoire.
The tradition of the biannual World Tour was inaugurated in 1987 with a transatlantic voyage that included stops from Britain to Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
; the group has completed a total of ten such tours that have included performances at the US Embassies in Paris, Madrid, Tokyo, and Tel Aviv, as well as the U.S. Consulate in Geneva.
Repertoire
The Tigertones draw from a repertoire of nearly a hundred songs that have been arranged almost exclusively by members of the group. While songs have been arranged since the group's mid-century inception, many songs "die" from the active repertoire to make way for new arrangements. As a result, the most successful and well-arranged songs from each generation remain with the group as it progresses forward, leaving the undergraduate group with a repertoire of songs representing all decades in fairly equal proportions.The most performed of these songs is probably the Tigertones' trademark arrangement of "Shower the People" by James Taylor
James Taylor
James Vernon Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000....
.
Performances and Tours
The Tigertones sing regularly for private parties, corporate-sponsored events, and charity functions primarily in the Northeast (NYC, Philadelphia, Boston). Several times a year, they embark on week-long tours that take them to domestic locations (San Francisco, Orlando, Atlanta) and abroad (Bermuda, Japan, British Virgin Islands).Attire
The Tones perform at events ranging from the ultra-informal ("Arch sings" in the arches on Princeton's campus) to the very formal (Carnegie HallCarnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, American Embassy in Tokyo). As a result, the Tones have adopted several styles of performance attire, the most notable being "Coat and Tie" (a blue blazer, khaki pants, and tie; medium formality and the most common) and the Tigertones' signature "DJ" (a full tuxedo with white dinner jacket, reserved only for very important performances, and the attire used for publicity photos and CD inserts).
Notable alumni
- Hutch Parker, film executive http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0404446/bio
- Wentworth Miller, actor/screenwriter http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0589505/bio
Fictional and literary appearances
Geoffrey WolffGeoffrey Wolff
Geoffrey Wolff is an American novelist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer. Among his honors and recognition are the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and fellowships of the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy in Berlin , and the Guggenheim...
's memoir Duke of Deception describes some of his experiences as a member of the Tigertones.
The character Paul Kinsey on the popular television series "Mad Men
Mad Men
Mad Men is an American dramatic television series created and produced by Matthew Weiner. The series premiered on Sunday evenings on the American cable network AMC and are produced by Lionsgate Television. It premiered on July 19, 2007, and completed its fourth season on October 17, 2010. Each...
" was a Tigertone.
External links
- http://www.tigertones.com/ - official site