GHS Talent Show a Big Success

Last Friday was the GHS Talent Show, exhibiting 11 performances made up of primarily musical acts and two dance performances.

Choir teacher and talent show judge, Michael Jones said that they, “had a large number of singers audition.  In fact, almost all of our students auditioning were singing, so we had to do our best programming a variety of acts throughout the show,” he said. “For next year we’re trying to come up with new ways to advertise the auditions so that we hopefully get a much greater variety in ‘talents’ to showcase!”

Student’s express their excitement about this year’s Talent Show.

“I really enjoyed the talent show this year. There was a variety of acts, some returning classic ones and some new ones which overall made it very entertaining,” said junior Ellen AbadSantos. “There were a handful of performances that I was surprised by, specifically Gavin Steele and Julia Brooks’ original song. I’ve never seen a Talent Show performance like it and thought it was very refreshing and enjoyable to watch.”

Senior Karin Melseth enjoyed the Talent Show.

“I thought the Talent Show was very interesting! There were a lot of people with amazing talents, some of the things I have never seen before!” she said.

Junior Anna Turdo liked the talent, but thought there were a lot of singing acts.

“I thought this year there was more singing, while last year there was more diversity among the acts, but either way I still love seeing everyone perform,” she said.

Freshman Emily Walker agrees with Turdo and hopes to see a larger variety of talent next year.

“I liked the Talent Show this year, although I wish there was more than just singing acts. I hope to see more of a variety of acts because people get more into it when there is more of a variety,” she said.

Senior performer Kira Bassler liked the Talent Show this year and was honored to perform.

“I thought the Talent Show was amazing and very well done this year. I feel so honored to have been a part of a show that showcased such remarkable and beautiful acts,” she explained. “In my opinion, this year’s Talent Show was different from previous years because of the number of musical performances. Every single performer did such an incredible job with their unique and beautiful acts. I could not be more impressed with the brave students who shared their talents with the school.”

Bassler explains why she believes it’s important to have Talent Shows in schools.

“In previous years, I’ve always enjoyed attending the Talent Show because I think it’s so special to discover the talents and skills the people in this school have,” Bassler said. “Each year I’ve been inspired by the students who not only try out for the Talent Show, but also go on to perform in front of their classmates. I believe it’s important for all schools to have Talent Shows every year because it allows students a chance to showcase their abilities and skills.”

The performers’ preparation for audition’s ranged depending on their experience; some acts took weeks to prepare, others only took days.

“To prepare, it took about five days to memorize and prepare for the audition, including memorizing the lyrics and the way in which I wanted to sing each line. I met with my voice teacher and we sang it over several times before the actual day of auditions,” freshman Phoebe Wolf said.

Senior Nisreen Mama performed a Thai dance.

“I practiced for about one week. But I looked up the pose of the dance and tried to mix it together for a little while,” she said.

Bassler took a short amount of time to prepare and was grateful she got to audition.

“I actually decided the last day of auditions to try out. I had been playing the song ‘Dream’ by Bishop Briggs since the summer, and I really liked the way it sounded. Three hours before I tried out, I texted the talent show committee and they graciously let me audition after everyone else.”

Senior Sarah Kuhnke knew for a long time that she wanted to try out.

“Rose and I knew what we wanted to do by early December and worked on getting it together in December and January,” she said.

Junior Gavin Steele performed twice, once with Julia Brooks (on an original song) and a second time with a group, and took a while to prepare.

“It took me a good 7-8 hours of desk time to play out the music to the song. I had worked on it for about two months on and off. After having a solid draft of the song, I gave it to Julia to fill in words. She got the song back within a week,” he said. “Talent show-wise, I asked Julia five days before auditions, if she’d be willing to sing it for the Talent Show. We then practiced the rest of the week.”

Performers explain their emotions from before their performance.

“I always get nervous when performing in front of crowds because I’m always so scared that I’ll mess up the words! I was so nervous for the first one, but when singing in the second performance, I was much more relaxed,” Wolf said.

Mama shares the same pre-show jitters.

“I was a little bit nervous because I had never shown it before, even back at home. I tried to focus on what I did and wanted it to be the best, so I brought up that feeling to myself and felt less nervous,” she said.

Bassler describes the nervousness she had performing in front of a crowd.

“It’s always a little unsettling to perform in front of such a large audience, especially an audience made up of people you know. My second performance was definitely the most comfortable because I had already gotten most of my anxiety out with my first,” she said.

All the performers had different motives for auditioning for the Talent Show.

“My mom and Abby had wanted to do tap together for the last time before I went to College, and we thought it would be better to show everyone what we could do,” senior Brook Kais said.

Kuhnke was motivated for a similar reason as Kais.

“Since it is our senior year and we don’t get many opportunities to sing in front of people, we wanted to take advantage of the situation and create that lasting memory,” she said.

Steele became motivated after he got positive feedback about the song he had wrote with Brooks.

“I had shown a few people my music and to my surprise I got good feedback. I really wanted to go out of my comfort zone and “debut” it. It took a little while for me to rack up the courage to want to audition, but I felt I would have regretted not doing them,” he said.

Both Bassler and Wolf were motivated by their family to perform.

“I’d say both my friends and family had the biggest influence on me being in the talent show. They encouraged me to audition even though I didn’t have the song memorized and my piano chords weren’t yet developed,” she said. “I couldn’t be more thankful for the friends and family who pushed me to audition because I know I would have regretted not being able to perform in my senior talent show.”

“When I first saw flyers for the talent show, I didn’t have a lot of interest, but my sister convinced me to try out. Once I decided to go for it, I found myself really wanting to get into the show, which was funny considering I might not even have done it on my own,” Wolf said. “I’m so glad I was able to do it and I’m so thankful for all of the people who wished me good luck and congratulations.”

Being a foreign exchange student, Mama was inspired to share her culture with the school.

“As a foreign exchange student, one of my roles is to represent my country and exchange my culture. So I thought it would be great if I shared it and showed how Thai dance is,” she said. “And it went very well. I’m thankful for everyone who gave me a compliment; it was so impressive.”