Princeton Katzenjammers


The Princeton Katzenjammers are the oldest co-educational collegiate a cappella group in the Ivy League. The group consists of fourteen to eighteen Princeton University students and holds auditions at the beginning of each semester. Its repertoire includes a wide variety of musical styles, with an emphasis on jazz, pop, and classical.
Their fifth album, "Midnight Comes Around", earned the group nominations in all Mixed Collegiate categories of the 1996 Contemporary A Cappella Recording Awards, winning the Best Arrangement award for Rick Hoffenberg '94's arrangement of Thelonious Monk's jazz standard "'Round Midnight," which was also selected for the "Best of College A Cappella" collection in 1996. CASA declared it "one of the finest vocal jazz tracks ever recorded by a collegiate group."

About the group

The group was founded by Peter Urquhart '74, a member of the Princeton Nassoons, and Mimi Danley '74, a member of the Princeton Tigerlilies, in 1973, the same year that undergraduate women first graduated from Princeton. The Katzenjammers joined four other Princeton a cappella singing groups in existence at the time: the Nassoons, Tigertones, Footnotes, and the Tigerlilies. These groups, along with the Tigressions, the Wildcats, and the Roaring Twenty, form Acaprez, an organization of eight Princeton University a cappella groups that organize arch sings and abide by regulations regarding the audition process and song ownership. The Katzenjammers have performed at numerous events on Princeton’s campus, in the surrounding community, across the United States and abroad. They participate in charitable events such as the 2014 "Sing Out for Shelter" benefit concert in Washington DC.

Origin of the name

Peter Urquhart recalls, "Somehow the name Katzenjammer came up, was overlooked briefly, and then considered again. I looked it up in the OED, and got excited about the confusion of meanings: 1. distress, depression; 2. a hangover, or symptoms of one; 3. a discordant clamor; 4. enfants terribles, as in the Katzenjammer Kids from the cartoon strip. Images of wailing, drinking, trouble-making, cats, jamming, Katz: a little degenerate maybe, but otherwise perfect. That was it!"

Music

The Katzenjammer repertoire spans a wide range of genres, including jazz, classical, secular, sacred, folk, and pop music, with over one hundred arrangements in the complete repertoire. Undergraduate members and alumni alike continue to contribute new arrangements at a regular pace. Two of Peter Urquhart's first arrangements written specifically for the Katzenjammers, "Ticket to Ride" and "Stoned Soul Picnic", remain traditional favorites and are always featured at reunions of Katzenjammer alumni.

Discography

Take One, 1977 Double Take, 1984 Time after Time, 1989 Sense and Muses, 1992 Midnight Comes Around, 1995 — XXV: Twenty-Five Years of Coed A Cappella, 1998 Traffic Jam, 1998 — • Autumn Leaves, 2001 — • • • • • Sassafras & Moonshine, 2004 — • • • • • Scratching Out a Tune, 2008 — • • I Want It To Be, 2011 Thoughts of Reminiscing, 2013 Wonderland, 2016 Evolution: The Katz at 50, 2023

Recent Tours

The Katzenjammers tour both domestically and internationally, usually during Princeton's fall and spring breaks, and occasionally during Intersession in January, between the winter break and first semester examinations.

Notable alumni

Brooke Shields '87 auditioned for The Katzenjammers in the fall of 1983, but either declined a callback or was rejected.