On the evening of September 18, 2026, the Schmitt Academic Center at 2320 N. Kenmore Avenue will fill with the sound of voices and nothing else. DePaul University's Acapella Showcase brings all four of the school's a cappella groups onto one stage for a performance aimed at potential new members. Between songs, each group will share information about itself and about auditions.
The event runs from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the SAC, the same building that anchors DePaul's Lincoln Park campus along the stretch of Kenmore that also holds the university's student center and library. It is the kind of low-stakes, high-reward campus gathering that a cappella culture has produced for more than a century: no tickets, no barrier, just a room and a repertoire.
A cappella — Italian for "in the manner of the chapel" — has been a fixture of American college life since the early twentieth century, when the first collegiate singing groups formed at schools like Yale and, later, on campuses across the country. The form's modern boom, fueled by pitch-perfect arrangements of pop songs and by competitions such as the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella, has made the college group a familiar institution: part social club, part performance troupe, part audition pipeline.
At DePaul, that pipeline runs through four distinct ensembles. Among them is DePaul Men's A Cappella, known on social media as DMaC. Its members have performed at venues around the community and have appeared alongside a counterpart women's ensemble — the two groups have shared bills at an annual winter concert, where DMaC has performed songs such as Bruno Mars's "Calling All My Lovelies."
The Fullertones represent a different chapter in the same story. The group bills itself as "DePaul University's freshest all-inclusive a cappella group." On its DeHub organization page, the Fullertones describe their purpose in terms that reach beyond performance: "The Fullertones provides a unique opportunity for students to participate in a singing group, and also aims to expand the opportunities for students to be involved in campus activities and events. Our group gives everyone a space to express themselves through music and connect through a love of singing." The group maintains an active presence online, posting covers ranging from Imogen Heap's "Headlock" to Sara Bareilles's "Love Song" and Ingrid Michaelson's "Old Days," and it has staged themed concerts with names like "Thrifty Below," a winking reference to Chicago's punishing winter weather.
That the showcase gathers all four groups in a single evening is itself a statement about how DePaul's a cappella scene has grown. Where once a campus might support one or two ensembles, DePaul now sustains a small ecosystem: a men's group, an all-inclusive group, and two more ensembles rounding out the roster. The showcase is designed to make that ecosystem legible to newcomers — to show a first-year student, or anyone who has never sung in a group before, what each ensemble sounds like and what joining one would mean.
For audiences, the appeal is simpler. A cappella is an unusually intimate form: no instruments to hide behind, no amplification to smooth over a missed entrance. What an audience hears is what the singers can do with their own breath and blend. In a two-hour showcase, that translates into a range of material — pop covers, standards, arrangements written or adapted by students — performed by groups whose styles and personalities differ as much as their membership does.
The Schmitt Academic Center, a familiar landmark on DePaul's Lincoln Park campus, has hosted countless student performances over the years, and the showcase fits the building's role as a crossroads for campus life. The organizers have set up an RSVP page through DePaul's DeHub engagement platform for those who want to register in advance.
What the evening ultimately offers is a chance to hear four groups that share a campus but not a sound. For students considering an audition, it is an introduction. For everyone else, it is a reminder of what a room full of unaccompanied voices can do — and of a tradition that has been doing it on college campuses for well over a hundred years.