New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Quinnipiac a capella group takes on big stage in NYC
NEW HAVEN — Since childhood, Nina Pezzello of Waterford has dreamed of performing in the heart of New York City during the busiest season of the year, Christmas and New Year weekends.
Two days before 2022 ended, she and 15 other Quinnipiac University students did just that, performing as an opener for a soldout Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall.
“It was so crazy looking out into the audience and seeing the amount of people and where our family was all sitting and just looking up, it was breathtaking,” said Pezzelo, president of QU Legends, an a capella group at Quinnipiac. “Honestly, I think I blacked out during it because it was just like, ‘oh, my goodness, this is happening.’”
The group performed “Mary Did You Know” and “White Winter Hymnal.” It lasted about five minutes, but Chris Baker of Cheshire said it was “a moment you’re going to remember forever for sure.”
The opportunity first came around in 2021, through a non-competitive process, but the shows that year were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pezzelo said the organizers heard of QU Legends because one of them went to college in Connecticut.
“Over the past year, I’ve been talking with the staff members from Radio City like emails, Zoom calls, phone calls to plan everything,” she said.
But the magnitude of how big of a deal it was didn’t hit them until they traveled to New York with their families and friends.
“We got to go in by the
stage door, which is where all the Rockettes and the actors enter, which is really cool in itself because, I mean, that’s crazy,” Pezzelo said. “When we walked into the theater I think we were all like, ‘holy, wow,’ because I forgot how big the stage was.”
It was a “dream come true” moment and “one of the top 10 life experiences” for her, she said, noting that her family had a whole bus of about 50 people down to the city to just watch them perform.
For Baker, treasurer for QU Legends, he said his favorite part of the day, besides performing, was to be able to walk the city and explore “all the iconic sites” for Christmas in New York with his family who traveled from as far as Massachusetts to watch the show.
“They were just as excited as I was, if not more,” Baker said. “Just to see us all on the big stage” and see how he has grown with the group in the past four years.
Angel Wang, the group’s music director, said she had never been to Radio City before and to be able to perform there during her first visit was an “insane” idea.
“My favorite part was really being able to reunite with the group again after the semester ended,” said Wang, of Cheshire.
Pezzello said the group has been together to the point the members consider each other family.
“There are the best people that I’ve had the pleasure to know and get close with,” she said. “It was so incredible to just see them and see all of us together, just like the excitement and the nerves before any big performance.”
The Quinnipiac a capella group also was ranked among the top 20 teams nationwide through a college-level competition earlier this year.