On May 18 and 19, the Lexington High School Performing Arts Departments came together to host the annual celebratory Pops concert in the gymnasium. The Pops concert features all four of the music departments at LHS: orchestra, band, chorus, and jazz.
“We get parents who might only usually come to one concert hearing everything,” Pat Donaher, the teacher for Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Combo, said. “It’s a chance to kind of showcase the breadth of our program.”
In addition to the parents and audience members, performing arts students get to see each other perform.
“I see Pops as a grand finale of collaboration between all the various musical ensembles here at LHS,” Amanda Offsey, a junior in Jazz Combo, said. “I think it is really cool for us to be able to witness what the other groups have been working on through the year and also participate collaboratively.”
Although the performing arts concerts are usually separated by department, the Pops concert showcases all four simultaneously.
“We’re all kind of in our little corners because the choruses have concerts, and the bands have concerts,” Donaher said. “It’s one of those nice places where the choruses get to hear the bands and the bands get to hear the choruses.”
Jazz, a less-known performing arts department, participated in the Pops concert for the first time in several decades last year. As the ensembles have grown in size, the time it takes to transition from one to another has increased as well. While chorus, band, and orchestra transition from each other, Jazz Combo fills in the silence with their own performances. With their performances, the group has increased its recognition in other music departments.
“After the concert [last year], kids from chorus, band, and orchestra would come up to us and be like, ‘I had no idea you guys were this good or that you could play or that this even existed or that combo was a thing’ and it was just nice that we finally can share it,” Offsey said.
Preparation for a concert of such size was difficult. In addition to the typical time crunch that results from concert preparation, ensembles face a stressed schedule due to AP exams.
“We have a full orchestra piece, but our schedules are all really weird because of APs, so we’re not meeting at all as a full ensemble until the actual day of the concert,” Daniel Kim, a junior in Chamber Orchestra, said.
Despite such challenges, the ensembles put on unforgettable performances.
This year’s concerts featured solo concerto performances from Kim, and Peishiuan Lin, a senior in Chamber Orchestra. They were winners of the annual LHS Concerto Competition. Additionally, ensembles performed several works composed by students, including several winning works of the Adam Gurley Green Award.
Since the event is centered on simply having fun, Pops provides students and ensembles a chance to express themselves in a less formal way.
As an amusing prank on their conductor Jared Cassedy, LHS Wind Ensemble yelled “Jared” in place of “Slava” at the end of their performance of Leonard Berstein’s “Slava!” on Sunday.
The LHS Symphony Orchestra performed “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie, in which three of their ensemble members dressed up as Ken and sang along.
However, being more focused on singing, dance, and putting on a show presented some unique challenges for their performance for “I’m Just Ken.”
“Getting three fur coats is actually really hard,” Porter said. “But we also realized that none of us can dance at all, so we ended up doing little twirls and [stuff] instead.”
The combined LHS Chorus put on an engaging Disney-themed performance with two songs featuring snippets of many Disney favorites and a The Lion King medley.
For seniors, the concert concluded their high school experience as a whole.
“I was sitting there during this nice jazz piece and thinking, ‘man, I’ve got a week left.’ I was reflecting on all my experiences that I’ve had here,” Porter said. “Half of those involve the bathroom doors not having handles on them and [stuff] like that, but a lot of them are just, there’s a lot that I’m going to miss when not being here.”
With an annual The Stars and Stripes Forever and the unraveling of the flag, the performing arts students, their friends, and their families celebrated the closing of this year and one last performance with their seniors.
