By John J. Moser
The Morning Call
May 15, 2012
(Edit: The link is no longer active, so the full text appears below.)
Tickets for hit a cappella group Straight No Chaser's Christmastime show at Allentown Symphony Hall sold out in a blink of 41 minutes when they went on sale Friday -- a likely record for the venue and so fast that a second show has been added.
Straight No Chaser, which gained attention more than four years ago with its YouTube performance of "The 12 Days of Christmas," will play a show at 2:30 p.m. Dec. 23 in addition to its previously announced 7:30 p.m. show that day.
Tickets to the early show, at $39.50, $49.50 and $59.50, go on sale at 10 a.m. Tuesday at http://www.allentownsymphony.org, 610-432-6715, or the box office at 23 N. Sixth St., Allentown.
Those prices represent a small discount from the evening show, which sold out the 1,200-seat theater, said Symphony Hall Marketing Director Lucy Bloise. She said it was the fastest sellout in the 11 years she's been with Symphony Hall, and it's likely a record.
It's the second regional venue at which Straight No Chaser has set a ticket-selling record. In 2009, the group sold out the 1,065 seats at the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg in a single weekend -- four months before its show. That record was broken in 2010 by Grateful Dead legacy group Further, which sold out the Sherman in eight minutes.
It will be the first Allentown show for the group -- whose primary frontman and singer, Jerome Collins, is an Allentown native and Allen High School graduate, and whose musical director, Walter Chase, is a Forks Township native.
The Allentown shows will close the group's fall tour, according to an itinerary released by the group's label, Atlantic Records.
It will come soon after the release of a new Straight No Chaser album -- its first since its Top 30 "With a Twist" in 2010. Atlantic Records says Straight No Chaser will go into the studio this summer to record its fourth full-length album, which is set to be released this fall.
The 10-man group became a hit when a member posted a video of it performing "The 12 Days of Christmas" mashed up with Toto's "Africa." It was intended to be a guide to help members of the group prepare for a 10-year reunion. The group was made up of classmates at Indiana University. The video went viral, and Atlantic signed the group.
The only time the group played the Lehigh Valley was in August, when it drew more than 5,000 to a headlining show at the new Sands Steel Stage at Bethlehem's Musikfest.
The group also has played Reading several times, including to a near-sellout crowd of 3,000 at the Sovereign Center's Reading Eagle Theatre on April 27.
The new tour opens Oct. 24 and also includes an Oct. 27 stop at Wilkes-Barre's F.M. Kirby Center for the Arts.
Straight No Chaser's popularity has also resulted in two-show stops in Chicago on Dec. 9, Cleveland on Dec. 16 and at Hershey Theatre on Dec. 22.
Hat Tip: @ShainaEng
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