FOUNDER

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE START of the Katzenjammers. In many ways I tried to get the group going when I first got to Princeton in the fall of my Freshman year, 1970. I knew that I wanted to start a mixed singing group, so I arranged a meeting with the presidents of the Nassoons, Footnotes, and Tigertones. We met at Ivy Club and I told them what I wanted to do. It's funny now that I think of it, because they all rather discouraged me from doing it. But they were very keen for me to get a female group going. I think they may have been fearful of the competition or something, but a female group was no threat at all. So I asked each president to supply me with an arrangement if they could help me out, and they all agreed. I announced auditions in the Princetonian, and two women in the village of Princeton helped me get arrangements while I wrote some others.

Anyway, with nine (?) original members, the Tigerlilies began. We sang our first "arch" (after a rehearsal) in the 1879 arch by the music building. We sang Somewhere There's Music for the Footnotes. And that's the history of the Tigerlilies. While I was the music director of the Tigerlilies I began a romance with Peter Urquhart, in my sophomore year. He was the musical director of the Nassoons. I remember telling him then that I wanted to get a mixed group going. It was too early for both of us to really do anything because of our commitments to the Tigerlilies and Nassoons. But over our Junior year we were talking about inviting people from all of the singing groups, people whom we had sung with and knew their voices. I am not as good with dates and names as other members probably are -- I remember Debby Petty and Julie Randall were originally altos. Jeff Parsonnet and Ben Indig were there in the beginning. I remember a very early group getting together when Robby Robertson of the Footnotes was there. I remember that we met in the evenings at Peter's room in 1901 across from Dillon Gym. We had a problem because many of us didn't want to be in two groups, and there were real loyalty problems, which makes sense. But once Peter was no longer musical director of the Nassoons and I had left the Tigerlilies, we were able to have official auditions and really get the group going. The original idea was to get a great sounding group of voices that could entertain with everything from Bach to the Beatles. We aimed for some arrangements with 8, 10, 12 parts. Peter and I wanted each of the original members to have a terrific ear so we could get a great blend, tight harmonies, and synergy from the beginning. The excellent solo voices were secondary, but we were grateful that there were terrific voices in the first group anyway. Most of our arrangements came from Peter, which really made our sound. It was really exciting to hear such a range from deep bass to high soprano and there was such a great sound even in the beginning.

I remember we did the piece by Debussy, which I loved, and I gave the group Go Lovely Rose, which is still difficult to do, to find the spots to breathe. We originally did a piece which was the ending of Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortileges -- Il est Bon L'enfant. It's a beautiful piece but not an arch stopper. We did a lot of pieces like that for our own fun; early pieces in Latin and madrigals were in our early repertoire as well. Our first arrangements by Peter were Too Much of Nothing and Ticket to Ride. I'm sorry I don't remember too much more except that Peter and I spent our senior year singing and establishing the group. There were no vacations, but I think he and I worked on the first record. I vaguely remember singing in a studio in Princeton. Peter was in charge of that record, now that I think of it, so it must have come out. On the art end of things I remember designing a record jacket for one of the Footnote albums, and I designed the logo for the Tigerlilies -- the woman draped over the tiger with the flowers. A little history -- I had the name "Tigerlilies," and when it came time to name the group, two other names were very popular: the Bengals and the Wind-chimes. Most of the group split their votes, casting 1, 2, or 3 points in the order of their preference. I believe Tigerlilies won by default.

There is so much that I have forgotten. I know that starting the group with Peter and singing as we did was one of my favorite aspects of Princeton. We had many impromptu arch sings in those days. After rehearsing at Peter's we'd sing in the arch of Dillon Gym (great acoustics). I loved all of the members and we got along so well. Everyone was so high on the music. But so much credit goes to Peter for his work and fabulous talent creating the excellence and fun which is the standard for the Katzenjammers today.