Chamber Singers performed in an Acapella Showcase, with an evening performance on Thursday, January 31 and a school-day assembly on Friday, February 1. The performance features acapella arrangements of contemporary pop music.
The songs are chosen and arranged each year by vocal instructor Mark Stover. “Everyone has ‘fun time with Mark’ in class, where we go in and audition for solos and then he picks them out,” said senior Sam Clark.
“He doesn’t tell us what songs we’re singing,” said senior Jake Thomas. “He just gives us our parts, and we put them together and try to guess the song.”
Two songs chosen this year were “As Long As You Love Me” by Justin Bieber and “Wide Awake” by Katy Perry. Clark said, “I loved the songs. Most of them are songs you hear on the radio, so they’re really fun.”
“I liked most of the songs, but I didn’t like some of them because I hadn’t heard them before,” said Thomas, referring to some of the lesser known song choices, such as “Poison and Wine” by The Civil Wars and “Listen to the Music” by The Doobie Brothers.
“I really liked ‘As Long As You Love Me,'” said junior Elysa Campo. “I’m not a big JB fan, but they did it well and Ricky had the attitude they needed.”
Junior Katherine Friedman said, “I thought Will and Mariette were really nice together,” referring to their performance in “Poison and Wine.”
While the soloists performed well, some people cited the lack of solo distribution. “Some people got 2 or 3 different solos,” said Thomas, who was denied a solo this year. “I wish that the solos were more evenly distributed and more people had gotten solos.”
Freshman Hannah Lefcourt said, “there were a lot of the same soloists.”
“The solos were good, but I was surprised that some seniors didn’t get any solos,” said Campo.
However, the transitions between songs made the solo distribution less apparent. “My favorite was when Mr. Roberts broke down ‘As Long As You Love Me,'” said Lefcourt.
“It’s really tricky when you have such a big group and you try to teach them acapella, and they did it really well,” said Campo.
“It was just amazing, as always,” added Friedman.
