The Owasso Pops concert
By Averie Grace-Hayes
Picture of the OHS Pops Concert taken by Averie Grace-Hayes
The OHS Pops concert is an end-of-the-year gathering of all of the OHS choirs, including jazz choir and several solos, who come together to have fun singing, dancing and showing off their skills from throughout the year.
The concert is a yearly mixture of popular songs (or ‘Pops’), everyone seemingly knows that the students pick beforehand. The performance also includes student-led choreography for each song. This year, the concert’s theme is ‘If You know, You Know’.
Genevieve LeMaster has been in choir since elementary school and she participates in regular choir and jazz choir. She is one of the main choreographers for the songs “Never Gonna Give You Up,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” and “Livin’ On A Prayer”
Picture of the OHS Pops Concert taken by Averie Grace-Hayes
“I really love teaching the choreography, because when it comes together, it’s so cool to be able to watch it through all of it coming together. … It’s just so much fun,” expresses LeMaster.
This is many of the choir students’ favorite concerts of the year because of the freedom and the choices that the students get to pick throughout putting the concert together.
“It’s our end of the year, student-led concert, which is my personal favorite because I like being in charge of stuff,” LeMaster explains. “We [the choir classes] send in what music we want to sing. The teachers have the final say on what we sing … because they are the ones that have to teach it. … Then it’s student choreography, so the students can sign up to be a choreographer and then [the choreographers] pick a song and they make up the dance and start teaching it to everybody.”
Mindy Bettridge is a longtime choir teacher, performer and mentor for OHS.
“To prepare for the concert, we learn the music in January and February and begin choreography rehearsals in early February.” Bettridge continues, “This is a huge undertaking to ensure that students in different classes are learning the same choreography. The choreographers create videos that [the classes] use to practice outside of class … Until the entire song is learned.”
With the Pops concert being such a success not only in the past but also this year; many students have fond memories of the concert. Thats including senior, Jadyn Martin who has been in choir since elementary school.
“My favorite part [of the concert] was the togetherness. Everybody kind of reaching for this common goal, that the kids are in charge of it … It’s just all fun,” illustrates Martin.
For many of the seniors this concert was a very emotional one. At the end of the concert, the seniors came out in their graduation attire and threw their caps in celebration of the end of the concert.
Martin explains, “This is the kind of stress that I live for … But it was different [being a senior in the concert] … But I really appreciated the experience and like, I got all the way through it … And I had a line of [choir] kids waiting to hug me … But I knew I had my place [in choir]; like I’ve know that but it reinforced that.”
Congratulations to the entire choir department for another successful Pops concert performance!