It was hard for Essence to envision a successful fate for its new CD, At Last, when just last year at this time they were dragging their van out of an icy ditch on the way to the recording studio. Now, one year and a lot of hard work later, the group officially released its newest CD to the Tufts community at Hotung Cafe last Friday night.
This new album marks the group's second in its eight-year history and its first since officially becoming an a cappella group.
"Stylistically, the music is very different. We worked a lot with how the sounds came out musically," junior and Essence president Kaity Colon said. "The music is stronger and our collaboration was totally different."
Essence is an all-female a cappella group that was founded in the early 1990s. The group was originally formed as band with the hopes of adding a special twist to the music scene at Tufts by singing songs from the African Diaspora- a genre that they felt was underrepresented. This band, called Spice, used occasional accompaniment like percussion and bass. Eventually the group changed the name to Essence, and by 1999 officially decided to focus solely on singing a cappella, while maintaining the same original concept.
"We try to focus on classic R&B, soul music like Sweet Honey in the Rock along with spirituals, rather than the more poppy kind of music," continues Colon.
It has taken a while for Essence, a fairly new group, to make its presence known.
"We've become stronger since the first CD," said sophomore Music Director Sarah Sutton. "We've gone through a lot of ups and downs since we've started, and we really feel like we're a lot stronger now; having the CD out really shows that."
Although alumna Diana Avery (LA '01) and Sutton musically arranged a good deal of At Last, the album has truly been a group effort. Essence focused on improving its instrumentation, and worked hard on strengthening the musicality of its work. "We really worked to get the background [instrumentation] to sound as much like the originals as possible," added Colon.
At Friday night's CD release party, the group sang two sets, focusing on the music from their new CD. In between sets, members mingled with the crowd, taking in the energy that was in the air. Because the crowd was smaller than their normal concerts, Essence was motivated by the ability to really connect with the crowd in this small setting.
"Just having a release party was really exciting, so everyone was pumped," Colon said. "The audience vibe was really positive."
Essence's first CD, Time is of the Essence, did not get much exposure. With At Last, however, the group feels it did things right. This album has more familiar and popular selections; songs with powerful emotion and feeling like "At Last" by Etta James, "Ain't No Sunshine" by Soul 4 Real and "Hold On" by En Vogue. They create an eclectic mix for every day enjoyment, ranging from soothing, gentle songs, to powerful, inspirational music.
"It's our little niche," says Sutton. "It's nothing that the other groups do - none of the other groups do the spiritual stuff. We take pride in the fact that all our members have really distinct soulful voices. We can blend together as a group or we can stand out as soloist voices."
Essence is indeed getting out there and showing the world what it can do. The group has entered the community to perform benefit concerts, most recently at Somerville High School.
"The community seemed to really enjoy it. It's fun to sing for an audience that isn't Tufts-related," Sutton said. "The community hasn't really seen us before and they may have never seen a cappella so it's a really rewarding experience and we get a good response from them."
The goal of Essence's music is to expose the beauty of the spiritual genre. "We want to express the love of music that we as a group have," said Colon.
This is truly expressed in this CD, and through Essence's performances. The group has a unique quality that makes for a powerful mixture of music on At Last. The group's hard work and year-long effort truly paid off, culminating in the success of this CD.
"The title says it for us - At Last here we are, we're here and we're finally making our mark in the a cappella world," stated Sutton.
