The Harvard Din & Tonics (informally The Dins) are a five-part jazz a cappella group from Harvard University, founded in 1979.
History
The group was founded in April 1979 as a public service project of the Phillips Brooks House Association at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, performing for the university community and local charitable organizations. Their repertoire was derived in part from the Dunster Dunces, an earlier Harvard a cappella group that was active from 1946 until 1968.[1][2] Their first public concert was at Yale University in November 1979, amidst the pageantry of the Harvard-Yale football game.
The Harvard Din & Tonics celebrated their fortieth anniversary with a concert at Harvard's Sanders Theater on April 13, 2019.
Previously an all-male ensemble, the group admitted its first female member in 2018,[4] and a second in 2019.
Name origin
The name Din & Tonics is a pun on the popular drink the gin and tonic, and the words din, meaning a loud noise, and tonic, a musical term meaning the first note of a musical scale. The lime green socks worn by the group's members are said to represent the lime that is traditionally served with the gin and tonic, hence the group's slogan, "A cappella with a twist."
The Dins, generally comprising 12 to 15 undergraduate students, is an entirely self-directed group. Most of their arrangements are written by current or former members. Their repertoire consists primarily of jazz standards from the Great American Songbook, as well as humor songs drawn from various periods and styles. Their repertoire also extends at times to numerous other genres, including folk, rock, calypso, spiritual, and pop. They regularly perform in white tie, tails, and their signature lime green socks.
The Din and Tonics began performing their own arrangement of "Sh-Boom" (generally regarded as the first popular doo-wop song after it became a #1 hit on the Billboard charts in 1954) in 1979. It has served as the Dins' signature song, and they have performed it at almost every concert since. "Sh-Boom" is featured on fourteen of the group's fifteen albums.
The Dins have performed overseas since the founding of the group, and began touring Asia regularly in the late 1980s. Since 1990, the Dins have gone on world tours biennially. Each tour is between 2 and 3 months long and includes performances in roughly 15 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, North America and South America. Additionally, they travel regularly to Vail, Colorado, Washington, D.C., New York City and spend spring break performing in Bermuda or Whistler, BC.
While on tour in 2010, the Dins performed at the closing ceremonies for the Shanghai Expo music festival.
In January 2017, the Dins performed the National Anthem for the Los Angeles Lakers at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, following a performance with the Harvard Krokodiloes for the Harvard Club of Southern California.
During their world tour, the Dins have recently[when?] performed with the award-winning German vocal quintet Vocaldente and Icelandic vocalist Andrea Gylfadóttir.[citation needed]
More recently,[when?] the Dins performed for John Williams and the assembled graduates at Harvard's 366th Commencement to celebrate his career. The group performed an original medley of his most notable songs, ranging from Jaws to Star Wars and Indiana Jones.[citation needed]
They have appeared in the films Mona Lisa Smile and First Affair.[citation needed]
Peter Feaver, American professor of political science and public policy at Duke University, special advisor for strategic planning and institutional reform on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration and director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.
Robert S. Rivkin, senior vice president for regulatory and international affairs and deputy general counsel of Delta Air Lines
Bruce Sabath, Broadway actor (Company, Cagney, The Girlfriend)
Patrick Whelan, first music director of the Dins, lecturer in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, pediatric rheumatologist at UCLA, president of the Los Angeles Pediatric Society, founder of Catholic Democrats
