Reverse Osmosis

Reverse Osmosis is a seventeen-person co-ed a cappella group at the University of Southern California founded in January 2001.Reverse Osmosis (RO) routinely performs on the USC campus, but has also toured the East and West Coast, performing in Times Square in NYC and Ghirardelli Square on San Francisco Bay.RO is a perennial competitor in the annual International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella competition. In the 2005-2006 ICCA competition, RO took first place overall in the Quarterfinal round held at USC's Bovard Auditorium.They also received special awards that night for best soloist (Jordan Koppelman for "Fix You") best arrangement (David Stal for "Fix You") best vocal percussion (Baraka May for "Fix You") and best choreography (Joey Payo and Melissa Joseph). At the West Seminfal round, held at Stanford University on March 18, 2006, RO placed 2nd overall.Due to a timing error, however, the judges missed a significant portion of Reverse Osmosis' performance.RO was then invited to the final round so that they could have a fair chance to perform their set in full for the ICCA judges, thus becoming the first group from USC to reach the ICCA Finals. On April 29, 2006, RO performed their award-winning set at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in New York City.Once again, they were awarded best vocal percussion (Baraka May for "Fix You"). A documentary, Rock and R.O., was filmed about the group and has been screened at the Newport Beach and Westwood Film Festival in Southern California.The feature-length movie was shown most recently at Florida's Delray Beach Film Festival, where it was named Official Selection and won the Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary.On May 20, 2009, Reverse Osmosis opened for Ben Folds at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles.