Twinsburg High's Great Expectations Dazzles Full House

Twinsburg’s high and middle school show choirs, Great Expectations and R. B. C. Singers, respectively, sent the audience to their feet on  Friday, March 4, in a night filled with green feathers, shiny sequins, and smiley faces.

The night started off with an oldies medley combination of famous songs like  Rock Around the Clock, Lollipop, Tutti Frutti  and Elvis Presley's Hound Dog.

This musical flashback was followed by talented solo and duet performances of more modern songs such as Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, Katy Perry’s Firework, and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.   If these classic or modern favorites didn’t do the trick, then the multiple costume changes and intricate choreography found in every song surely captivated the audience.

The first half concluded with a care-free performance by both choirs of The Black Eyed Peas’ song, I Gotta Feeling. During this section students were allowed a bit more freedom in their dancing and clothing attire of jeans and T-shirts. 

It was obvious that the audience was getting into it. At intermission, Pastor Leroy Burts shouted, “It’s a real nice show."

“I’ve liked every song, they started off with my generation and I know them all,” he said. "Didn’t you hear me singing?” 

The R. B. C. Singers opened up the second half with their competition ballad. Girls dressed in light purple sequined dresses and boys in collared track jackets and jeans. It wasn’t until they wore their smiley face brown paper bags that the R. B. C. Singers really jazzed the crowd during Put on a Happy Face from the musical Bye Bye Birdie.

But they didn’t stop there; during the song How Can I Keep from Singing they proved their vocal talents with complicated harmonization.

This performance was followed by more solo performances of Forget You by Cee Lo Green, Flying Without Wings by Westlife, and That’s Life by Frank Sinatra.

Lastly, Great Expectations opened their portion of the show with Kermit the Frog confiding about how It’s Not Easy Being Green. Afterwards, the group introduced their own competition ballad. The choir dressed in green, girls in feathered dresses and hot pink pumps, and boys donned suits for the colorful performance.

Despite their fun clothing, Great Expectations brought a fierce and serious demeanor to the vocals of their slower ballads.

After the show, when asked about their experience with the choir, Great Expectations performers Joseph Onder and Gabby Rigol said they put in a lot of work for every show.

“We practice three days a week," they said. "We’ve done a lot of shows; we are well rehearsed and are not nervous. We go to around six or seven competitions a year and we won at Portsmouth, our first.”

Brittany Eckenroad and Jamie Myer both agreed the audience gives them motivation.

“Performing is so much better when there’s a bunch of people in the audience. The entire audience is there for us.  We felt the rush with whole audience there supporting us.”