Music from the big screen comes to Charles City

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

A little bit of Hollywood walked down the red carpet at North Grand Auditorium in Charles City Tuesday night.

The third annual Charles City High School Pops Concert was entitled “A Night at the Movies,” and before the evening was through, guests were treated to at least a portion of more than 50 different songs from favorite flicks.

“Every song our audience hears tonight has to have been written for a movie or played in a movie,” explained Cael Ruzicka, one of four CCHS seniors who emceed the event.

The Pops Concert, hosted by the high school choir and the Charles City Fine Arts Century Club, featured the CCHS choirs, directed by Derek Sturtevant, joined at times by the NIACC Singers, under the direction of Jayson Ryner. All vocal groups were accompanied by some of Charles City High School’s finest instrumentalists.

The concert featured several solo and small group acts as well, and several other entertaining distractions — including impromptu games of “Name That Tune” played between the emcees and the audience, and successful attempts by members of the CCHS Speech and Drama departments to reenact famous scenes from movies on the spot.

Numbers performed included “Dancing Queen” from the movie “Mamma Mia” by the combined choirs, “Touch the Sky” from the movie “Brave,” performed by the Comet Choir, a Disney medley performed by the combined choirs and the CCHS vocal group Rhymes With Orange singing the title song from the 1944 movie “I’ll Be Seeing You,”

The NIACC Singers performed “My Heart Will Go On” from the movie “Titanic” and “Eye of the Tiger” from the “Rocky” movies. The NIACC Choir featured CCHS alumni Tyreque Baker, Valerie Allison and Olivia Wolfe.

The group joined the CCHS combined choirs for a rousing rendition of “Glory” from the movie “Selma,” with solos by Trimmel Christian, Dajon Richards, and Sincere Collins.

Individual acts included Lily Usher playing ukulele and singing the theme song from the movie “Lava,” Harper McInroy performing the theme from the movie “Schindler’s List” on viola, Josie Groesbeck performing “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” from the movie “Burlesque,” and senior Kiarra Mashek performing “Never Enough” from the movie “The Greatest Showman.”

CCHS seniors Madi Lincoln and Haydn Pleggenkuhl performed the song “Every Day” from the movie “High School Musical 2.”

Other performances included “9 to 5” by the Charles City Concert Choir, “Sunny Side of the Street” by the vocal jazz group Here Comes Treble, and “Route 66” by the CCHS jazz vocal group 2JazzedUp.