Jenna Knott (11) walked alongside her friend Jordyn Nygren (11) facing the crowd of high schoolers

in the amphitheater during lunch, April 26. They searched the crowd for the smiling faces of their senior friends, to whom they dedicated the surprise performance. Knott and Nygren took a deep breath together, remembering their secret practices in the theatre lobby bathroom. They prepared to sing “You’re Gonna Go Far,” by Noah Kahan, concluding the two-day annual Spring Music Festival. 

 Knott and Nygren have been practicing since early March, and last week, were finally able to perform on stage while students watched from blankets on the grass. Meant as a goodbye gift for their graduating friends, they carefully hand-picked the song, covertly practicing during their third-period drama class.  

“A lot of our friends like Noah Kahan as an artist, and this song is about leaving your hometown and being scared to leave your friends and your family behind, but knowing you have to go to better yourself,” Knott said. “It’s a song about moving away and growing up, but a lot of our senior friends are also in theatre, so we’ve been rehearsing in the theater lobby bathroom to try and keep it a secret.”

Nygren and Knott are in Theatre Company together, which they said allowed them to grow closer. The two are also well versed in live performances, as both took on solo singing roles in the recent musical, Mean Girls. Nygren performed every other night of the musical as a strong leading vocalist; however, she said that the novel setting of the Spring Music Festival forced her to prepare differently.

“I think the hardest part for me is that I have never done the Spring Music Festival before, so I was actually very scared to do this, but excited,” Nygren said. “In theatre, it’s different because you’re playing a role and you’re somebody else. You’re behind a bunch of lights and you have all this makeup and costume on. So, if you mess up, you can play it off as part of the show. But now Jenna and I are just presenting [as] ourselves. It feels very different, but very exciting because [performing] is what I love to do.”

Just before Nygren and Knott, Crystal Chen (11) performed center stage alongside nine other members of the a cappella club, Fellowship of the Sing. The group created their own track, backbeats, and harmonies with their voices as they sang “Hidden In the Sand” by Tally Hall along with two barbershop tags: “Lone Prairie” and “Give Me Your Hand”. The tags are snippets of songs often sung by barbershop quartets, characterized by their melodic style and close harmonies. 

Nearly a year ago, Chen arranged “Hidden In the Sand” to fit an a cappella group by translating and assigning certain notes in the song to match members’ vocal ranges.

“I went on YouTube and found a lot of piano versions [of the song],” Chen said. “And so I just put that on Musescore, which is a musical notation app. I divided the notes of the piano chords like, ‘There are three notes in this chord; the top note is for soprano, the middle note is for soprano 2, and the bottom note is for alto’ and I assigned the different notes to different people.”

The Fellowship of the Sing also had to make adjustments because according to Chen, a cappella groups thrive inside echoey buildings, but being outdoors, the club had to use microphones and speakers to project their voices. 

“When we were rehearsing with the mics, we realized that we couldn’t blend very well,” Chen said. “When indoors, like in churches, the architecture of the church echoes everything to hear. But especially if you don’t have good acoustics, it’s really hard to hear people [outdoors] because the sound gets lost into the open air. So, we had to use microphones.”

Next year, Chen plans to lead the Fellowship of the Sing again, performing a more diverse set with both barbershop tags and high-energy songs in next year’s Spring Music Festival. 

Nygren and Knott said they also hope to return after an amazing first performance. 

“I thought it was going to be a terrifying experience,” Knott said. “But everybody was really supportive. I love how this school does this, and it’s just really cool. All of our friends came out to watch and one of them cried.”

As the school year comes to an end, Knott said she hopes that her graduating friends can remember this performance as a reminder of their friendship. She said that no matter where the future takes them, they’ll always have these memories to hold onto and their friendship to rely on.