On Saturday, Northwestern’s Jewish a cappella group, ShireiNU, performed at Ilu Finu in Highland Park. North Suburban Synagogue Beth El hosted the event.
ShireiNU President and Medill senior Samantha Max said the group has performed in concerts at Synagogue Beth El in the past, but this year was the first year the concert was a part of a larger competition.
Ilu Finu is a months-long songwriting competition for collegiate Jewish a cappella groups. At the end of last school year, a member of ShireiNU - Sam Shankman (School of Comm '17) - submitted his work to the competition. Even though Shankman graduated that year, ShireiNU was still able to perform his song at the concert this weekend.
“It was kind of strange since, because it was songwriting competition, the entries had already been sent in and over the summer they picked the winners,” Max said. “The concert was being used to actually showcase the music and announce the winners. We were excited to know what place we came in but we already knew we had placed in the competition.”
The night of the concert, the group learned that they had placed second in the Shabbat Morning Song category with Shankman’s song “Modeh Ani.” ShireiNU performed this song on Saturday as well as “Tzion/Veshamru” - a song submitted by SUNY Binghamton who could not attend due to distance. Finally, ShireiNU performed “Finesse,” which was unrelated to the competition, but arranged by current member Nicole Rinne.
In addition to this concert, ShireiNU hosts both a fall and spring concert on campus every year. They also perform at other smaller events throughout the year at dorms, Greek life events and the Jewish Center – Hillel.