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Hidden among the student body at Southeast Missouri State University is a young star named Mirco Tscharner. He was part of a six-man a cappella group in Switzerland called Invivas.
The band members all knew each other in high school and attended Evangelische Mittleschule Schiers. They were part of the GraubĂĽnden youth choir as well as their school choir.
Some days after school the boys would go across the street to a bar to relax. The drinking age in Switzerland is 16, so this was a normal thing for most high school students. They would spend all night there sometimes. Every time they drank together, they would tap their glasses against each other's and sing the drinking song, "Inviva."
"We drink beers and every time we'd cheer, we'd sing a drinking song, 'Inviva.' Inviva means 'for living,'" Tscharner said.
That's when they got the idea to start a band together.
"One of my best friends had the idea, 'Let's do an a cappella group. I mean we like to sing, let's do it like The Wise Guys," Tscharner said.
The Wise Guys are a famous a cappella group from Germany that provided a lot of inspiration for Invivas.
"We took Invivas because we said that 'Inviva' the drinking song describes us the best," Tscharner said.
The principal at their high school heard that the six boys from the school had formed a band, so he asked them to perform at the school prom. Their first show was a success and opened a path that led to even greater success.
"We got invited for an event where a birthday is," Tscharner said. "And later someone there heard about it, told some friend and this friend had something like that, so it spread out."
As their popularity began to blossom, they started getting bigger and better shows. Every year in Switzerland, a concert is held on Easter.
"Then we got invited for the Easter Concert," Tscharner said. "We only had an advertisement in the local newspaper, but the room was full like over 200 people. It was surprising. We sang with the sheet music in front of us and we barely moved but the people liked it because we are charming and good looking and all that."
Using some of their connections, they booked several more concerts.
"We had a concert in a local art place, which is small, but we got invited for this because the organizer for this art center is also the secretary at our school, so she knew us," Tscharner said.
Their next concert was the ticket into many more, bigger shows.
"The chief of the bank heard about us, and he is actually an ex-student from my father because my father's a teacher," Tscharner said. "So he came there and he heard us and he was amazed by us. He wanted to invite us for this bank thing. And it was in a congress center. We went there, and there was over 700 people. We performed there twice, and the people, they really liked it, they were really amazed."
The band tries to sing as many different genres of music as possible. They started out just copying songs from The Wise Guys but went on to start arranging their own songs. They performed jazz, blues, rock, pop and even Disney songs.
"Our goal is to have songs for everyone, like that everyone can enjoy -- can come and enjoy it," Tscharner said. "Because otherwise normally you focus on something, but that's stupid because then only this kind of people come."
All of the band's arrangements are now done themselves. As they progressed, they felt it necessary to start doing their own songs. Band member Basil Zinsli is in charge of the arrangements.
The band wanted another way for people to hear about them, so they decided to make a music video.
"We wanted to have a song online that has something surprising that the watcher doesn't expect," Tscharner said.
Invivas performed the song "Hide and Seek," originally performed by the singer Imogen Heap. To surprise it's viewers, Invivas added a base drop and a beatbox mix.
The band continues to perform even though Tscharner left. At present, Invivas has five members and are performing concerts for thousands of people.
Tscharner actually heard about Southeast from a friend of his back home. They were discussing future plans and she suggested moving to Cape Girardeau to better his English. Tscharner's friend suggested this because she originally came to Cape Girardeau through a friend's uncle who knew a family who lives in the area.
"So she told me about it and she said, 'They all have an acting, a theatre department. I can get you the email.' And then I got the email and I wrote to Ken and he said, 'Yeah, come on.' He sent that to international sender. I wrote the thing, I applied for, I took my English test, which was very good because at first I was really bad at English, and it all went really fast and suddenly I was here," Tscharner said.
Dr. Kenneth Stilson is a professor at Southeast and teaches several acting classes. He was the first person at Southeast that Tscharner had contact with before coming to Cape Girardeau.
Tscharner's goal in coming to Southeast is to perform and to learn how to make a career out of it.
"What I like of acting is I can be someone else. It's the best feeling if you're on stage, and you are really in this character and you really make the audience believe that this world that we are playing on is like real," Tscharner said. "We can make them enjoy this whole evening, I love that feeling."
Tscharner has two major auditions in his schedule. The first was in February at Guildhall in London. The second will be in April at the University of Arts in London.
Tscharner said that the only thing that would make him happy would be the ability to continue performing for the rest of his life.
