The Nanuet High School Pops Concert is an annual event where the Nanuet Orchestra, Chorus and Band perform popular, mainstream music. This year, on March 21st, the theme was songs from movies.
According to Ms. Ussi, the Nanuet Choir Teacher, the program is always exciting to plan.
“Mrs. Dobelle and I try to include student input in all of our concert programming,” she said, “However, for the Pops Concert, we fully center the student voice, and all of our repertoire for the concert was chosen from student suggestions.”
The first piece promoted by the chorus was ““Jai Ho,”’ from the movie Slumdog Millionaire. According to Ms. Ussi, this piece was suggested by a student in the chorus at the beginning of the year. The student did her own research and even found different arrangements that had a SATB (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass) format for the choir.
“After she had suggested the song, we discovered from Dr. Skaba that the theme of this year’s Pops Concert would be movie music, and realized how serendipitous it was to have had this great song suggestion from one of Bollywood’s leading film score composers,” Ussi said.
The second song the chorus performed is one that Mrs. Dobelle and Ms. Ussi chose, after many members of the High School Chorus requested to do, “What Was I Made For?” from the Barbie movie.
“This excitement for the summer film combined with other students asking to sing some music by Billie Eilish led us to the song, “What Was I Made For,” Ms. Ussi continued, “It just seemed to combine all of those interests well, and contrasted our first song nicely in terms of style and energy”.
The final piece from the Chorus was an overwhelming request from the student body who were extremely excited about performing music by ABBA. After looking around for which tune might fit best, Ms. Ussi and Mrs. Dobelle decided on a medley of ABBA’s popular hits including “Dancing Queen”, “Fernando”, and “Mamma Mia”, all of them from the movie-musical Mamma Mia (Mamma Mia 1 and 2).
“Mrs. Dobelle and I had already decided on this,” Ms. Ussi concluded, “but had doubly confirmed our hopes for this piece when we had a few students actually find the same arrangement and suggest it to us during a small repertoire research project in class.”
Ms. Lucksom, one of two Orchestra teachers, explained the program for the Orchestra’s segment.
“Brave” was the first pick for the Orchestra because Ms. Lucksom felt the rich Scottish fiddle music present in this piece – fun and great for articulation as well as tone changes.
“This was a medley of music from the movie, so it was fun seeing the storyline of Brave play out in the music.” Ms. Lucksom said.
The next pick was “Harry’s Wondrous World” from Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. Everyone knows the story of the Boy-who-lived and according to Ms. Lucksom,“It was really a no-brainer pick, it is a classic with a lot of great string lines.”
Moon River was the next pick of the Orchestra for its gorgeous melody and harmony – filled with luscious chords.
“This was our slow piece that was great for strengthening bow distribution and musical intention,” Ms. Lucksom added, “It really helped our pre-existing conversations about interpretation reach new levels. This was my personal favorite piece to work on with the HS Orchestra!”
The last piece the Orchestra chose to play was “I’m A Believer” from the movie Shrek.
“ This is a very fun, exciting, and well known tune! We wanted a big finale that was both stylistically different and also grooved,” According to Ms. Lucksom.
Mr. Miller., Band teacher at both Highview Elementary and the High School elaborated on the Band’s pieces.
“We chose our four tunes very systematically,” he explained. “We chose first ‘Pure Imagination’ from Wonka because it was just in the movies and it is a fun tune and a very well known one as well.”
The second tune was chosen because it had been started pre-pandemic and the Band never got the chance to play the piece on stage, according to Mr. Miller.
“It was definitely an Academy-Award-winning piece, and lots of different things are very cool,” Mr. Miller continued. “The composer and soundtrack so we said to ourselves, you know we haven’t done this one in a while so let’s bring it back! That piece is ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.’ This piece is from the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
Another selection was “All That Jazz” from the musical Chicago.
“It is a classic!” Mr. Miller said. “ It’s from a very well known Broadway show, and also was on the big screen. It’s also won lots of awards, but stylistically it’s something that Band students should play, so we threw that up there for a bit of a challenge, and we love that it features a sort of swing style and Dixieland sort of feel.”
Finally, the last tune selected was “Lawrence Of Arabia,” Mr. Miller explained.
“It was written well before I was born but it won many Academy Awards,” he said. “[It’s from] a very well known movie, a very well known soundtrack and definitely something students should learn to play.”
The pops concert was fun for all the students and staff and their families who joined. They ended up turning it into a trivia night where families of those performing could win prizes if they guessed all the pieces correctly.