Medleys of music filled the air and created an atmosphere of unity across all bands on the night of the first band Pops Concert. Band students came together to have a night of music to close out the school year.

“It was a really fun experience and everything went smoothly. For it being the first year being in band and having a concert with music that was fun to learn, I did the best I could and had a great time with it,” freshman Savannah Rinders.

In the Bellevue East auditorium on April 30, Wind Ensemble, Concert Band, Jazz Band, and Symphonic Band put on a concert featuring well-known, mainstream songs.

“I think Mr. Wright thought it would be more fun to have all the bands do more upbeat and common songs,” percussionist sophomore Chris Moore said.

Pops Concerts are more of an non-traditional, separate events for both band and choir. In choir, students audition to sing solos or duets for the departments. This year in band, all of the separate bands at East participated in playing more modern songs from various artists and movies.

“We’re doing special songs, like songs people actually know and listen to rather than a classical type of concert,” Rinders said.

When the idea of a Pops Concert was announced the students had a very upbeat reaction.

“I pushed the March one [concert] to later in March, because of the snow days, which was kind of like our core meat of the bone concert literature and we just decided on doing something a little more low key, let’s do some fun things so that’s where the Pops Concert came from,” band director Charles Wright said.

The bands had a month to prepare for this concert. In that time all bands practiced both in class and in their own time.

“It’s not a lot of time for band to prepare, we haven’t had as many rehearsals and it usually takes a lot longer than a month. But slowly I can hear things piecing together,” Rinders said.

The concert featured Ray Charles, and “Africa” by Toto. Symphonic Band played “How far I’ll Go” from Disney’s “Moana.” Music like medleys of several other Disney movies like “Cars” were also played.

“I asked the kids for some ideas of what they wanted to play and we went out and searched and went through a website jwpepper.com. We’re doing some tunes that I like some of my favorite artists. But it was more of a combination of student ideas and my ideas,” Wright said.