Spring Pops Choral Concert

Niwot High School's Spring Pops Choral Concert held on May 14, featured the Tenor and Bass Choir, the Treble Choir, the Chamber Singers, Evenstar, the student a cappella group, the Unaccompanied Minors, and combinations of choirs.

The Tenor and Bass Choir performed "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars, "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King, and the English sea shanty song, "Drunken Sailor."

The Treble Choir performed "Build Me Up Buttercup" by Mike d'Abo and Tony Macaulay and made popular by The Foundations, "Taylor, the Latte Boy" by Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich and recorded by Kristin Chenoweth, and "Dance the Night" from the movie Barbie.

Sedalia performed "When She Loved Me" from the movie Toy Story, "For Good" by Stephen Schwartz from the musical Wicked, and "All Star" by Greg Camp and made popular by Smash Mouth in the format of an English madrigal.

The Chamber Singers performed "Invisible String" by Taylor Swift, "Price Tag" by Jessie J., and "Orange Colored Sky" by Milton Delugg and Willie Stein.

Evenstar performed "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele, "What Was I Made For" by Billie Eilish from the movie Barbie, and "Jai Ho (Dance With Me)" by A. R. Rahman from the movie Slumdog Millionaire.

Unaccompanied Minors performed an a cappella combination of "Bright Lights Bigger City" by CeeLo Green, Ben H. Allen and Tony Reyes, and "I've Got the Magic in Me" along with "Lollipop" featured in Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2.

Combined Soprano and Alto Choirs sang a haunting rendition of "The Hanging Tree" by Suzanne Collins from the movie The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and the Combined Choir performed "Seasons of Love" by Jonathan Larson from the musical Rent right before the Senior Rose ceremony.

"There's a lot that goes into selecting songs for the Pops concert," said Laura Walters, NHS choir teacher and concert director. "I typically give the students a google form survey sometime in January asking for song suggestions of pop/music theater/jazz songs they'd possibly like to sing at the pops concert. I look at their lists and search to see if there are any decent choir arrangements. Some of the songs are selected from their suggestions. I also tend to sit down for hours and hours listening to hundreds of songs, usually through the website J.W. Pepper, to try to find the best ones. I want to find songs that I think the choirs would be successful with, songs that they would have fun with and still be challenged by."

This was Walters' first concert since December as she was on maternity leave with her son Levi. Walters was delighted to start performing again. "I'm really excited that I was able to get back to school a week before the concert and be able to end the school year with my students," she said.

"All of these students worked hard to practice and prepare for the concert."

According to Walters, there was a particularly large number of students who had solos or were a part of a small solo group during the Pops Concert. These students included Violet Sparks, Megan Swedlund, Amy Calderon, Lizeth Cervantes Reza, Rae Sweeney, Kaia Trachanas, Capri Villarreal, Skyler Watson, Peter Rosen, Kaiya Brown, Courtney Lebsock, Harlo Rowell, Micah Kanaar, Kassidy Brackett, Charlotte Stauch, Angela Tran, Aiden Sagner, Spade Lombardi, Kennah Brackett, Fred Zorgdrager, James Miller, JoDe Zorgdrager, Rori Ann Barchers, Hazel Rinehart, Sophie Arnett Simon, Greta Stauch, Anna Enssle, Prugh Dunfee, Jade West, Jasper Allison, River Osgood, Hayden Baldwin, Ash Kissinger, Anthony Petty, Julian Wu, Dylan Blackwell, Camryn Bell, Elliot DeBusk, Hope Holden, Jocelyn Lara Serrano, Hannah Nelson, Ada Southern Weber, Ollie O'Brien, Ace Schuler, and Jackson Carano.

Student accompanists included Jasper Allison, Merrick Blondeau and Alex Fick along with the principal pianist, Neal Dunfee.

After the concert, the Rose Ceremony recognized all of the seniors participating in choir. This year's Rose Ceremony had the largest number of graduating students in the past eight years with 34 seniors, many of whom started choir during COVID.