BRATTLEBORO — The Brattleboro Union High School Music Department will present its annual Pops Concert on Thursday, May 24, at 7 p.m., in the BUHS auditorium. No admission will be charged for this event.
The concert band will open with music from the 2004 Disney Pixar film, The Incredibles, by Michael Giacchino. This will be followed by John Philip Sousa's 1908 march, The Glory of the Yankee Navy. Senior tuba player Jackson Levengood will be featured in Tuba Tiger Rag, composed by Harry DeCosta with music by the Original Dixieland Band.
The band's program concludes with Frank Ticheli's An American Elegy. This work was composed in memory of those who lost their lives at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, and to honor the survivors.
The band's performance will honor these victims as well as the hundreds of other students and teachers who have died or been injured in school shootings since that date. The work takes on added relevance as Americans, and especially the nation's youth, struggle to find solutions to gun violence in schools.
The second ensemble to perform will be the Madrigals. Their program will include favorite songs of the senior members including Say My Name by Destiny's Child, The Winner Takes it All by ABBA, Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield, and Material Girl by Madonna. All senior members will have featured moments in the performance.
Next to take the stage will be Jazz Workshop, performing Stanley Turrentine's Sugar as well as Eugene Uman's Snowy Day Bossa.
The Chorus follows with a treble gospel song based on Maya Angelou's poem Still I Rise by Rosephanie Powell, featuring Nev Beauchamp and Honnee McManus. This song is a tribute to the power and strength of women through history, as well as the strength shown by today's young women.
The low voices follow with the ballad Tell My Father from the musical The Civil War, arranged by Andrea Ramsey. This song will feature senior Derrick Harnish and will be performed by the B.U.H.S. low voices as well as incoming low voices from the BAMS Eighth-Grade Chorus.
The chorus concludes with selections from the Disney musical, Newsies. Featured songs will include Carrying the Banner, Santa Fe, King of New York, and Seize the Day. Student soloists are Derrick Harnish, Hazel Kinnersley, Isaac Freitas-Eagan, Sarah Gordon-Macey, Jackson Levengood, Sarah Gallagher, Lizzy Arel, Alissa Walkowiak, Cassie Dunn, Lilia Kocsis, Sam Capcara, Claire Holmes, Haley Kuralt, Malcolm Toleno, and Honnee McManus.
The Jazz Band concludes the concert. They will perform Everything in Its Right Place by Radiohead. Senior trumpeter Rhys Glennon will step to the front of the band to sing George and Ira Gershwin's jazz standard, Nice Work if You Can Get It. The concert will close with Stevie Wonder's tribute to Duke Ellington, Sir Duke.
Members of the senior class will be recognized in this, their final concert at BUHS.