This year’s Acappellooza Summer camp brought 142 high school students to the UMSL campus for an immersive four days of singing. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)

For four days in late June, the sound of classic rock filled the halls of the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center as “Acappellooza Summer” returned to the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Now in its 13th year, the overnight music camp brought 142 students in grades 9 through 12 to the UMSL campus for an immersive singing experience led by some of the world’s best-known names in a cappella music.

“I don’t think there’s a single camp in the entire country that’s exactly like Acappellooza Summer,” Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Studies Jim Henry said. “We bring in really great clinicians, including Debbie Cleveland from Florida, who’s known around the world. We bring in international-caliber quartets as section leaders, including Radiant Quartet, who helped with our treble chorus, and The Newfangled Four who worked with our tenor/basses. There is no camp in the country – at least that I’ve heard of – that does it exactly the way we do. And that’s really appealing to people.”

Jim Henry, an associate professor of music and director of choral studies, works with students during an Acappellooza Summer rehearsal.

This year’s attendance was the highest number of students the camp has seen since the COVID-19 pandemic. While still primarily local, Acappellooza Summer has earned a national reputation over the years, attracting campers from Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma. And thanks to scholarships through HarmonySTL, students are able to attend regardless of their financial situation.

The girls chorus performed songs including ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” and Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

“I think the thing that makes it most special is that so many different students are represented,” Henry said. “The variety of students, the different backgrounds that all of them have, the different schools that they all come from – these are students who absolutely would not ever have a chance to cross paths with each other out there in the real world, and here they come together, all races and creeds and colors, and everybody has one single mission, which is just to put on an amazing performance and to bring some beautiful music into the world. It’s a real microcosm of what I think we all wish the whole world would be, because these kids don’t care about anything except working together on the task at hand.”

This year featured a classic rock theme, with campers performing songs such as ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Sting’s “Fields of Gold.” Campers were given learning tracks and sheet music ahead of time so that they could arrive at camp with all the songs fully memorized before spending three and a half days working on choreography and perfecting their group performance to a crowd of nearly 1,500 people Friday night. Throughout the week, they were able to learn from and share the stage with groups such as Radiant Quartet, The Newfangled Four and St. Louis’ own Ambassadors of Harmony.

The boys’ chorus performed songs such as “Fields of Gold” by Sting.

Henry said the camp fosters lifelong friendships and teaches teamwork and dependability, noting that music ensembles have the ability to teach high school students personal and lifelong skills.

The camp culiminated in a performance at the Touhill on Fri., June 27 with an audience of nearly 1,500 people.

“Ensemble is one of the only classes in school that teaches you the really important lifelong skill of the importance of depending on other people and being dependable to other people,” Henry said. “You can sit in a math or science class, and you can get an A when everybody around you is getting Fs. You don’t depend on them for your best work, but in an ensemble, you really need all the people around you to be giving their best in order for you to be able to give your best, and vice versa. That’s a real trust that I don’t think kids learn in any other way except music ensembles and sports. We have all these kids standing side by side who are all blending voices and, with singers, that means they’re also blending their souls, because those two things are very connected in a singer. It’s a really personal thing.”

View the full livestream of the 2025 Acappellooza Summer concert below: