Kathi Gadow: Can you tell me a little bit about the history of the Wisconsin Singers?
David Porto: The singers was formed back in 1967 by a guy name Arlie Mucks Jr., and he created the group in a time where there were a lot of riots going on around Madison. He created the group to sort of show the world that Madison wasn’t just the hub for a lot of protests but that a lot of good was coming out of the university.
Since then it’s kind of been transformed into a professional entertainment company. We travel all around the nation, and we work with mostly high school and middle school students to get them excited about college and following their dreams.
KG: What is show choir really like? Is it anything like “Glee”?
Eric Rentmeester: I think that “Glee” kind of skews the image of what we are as a group.
Nicola Hultgren: I think “Glee” is kind of giving it a different twist. It is so much recorded that it seems like they are all perfect. A lot of high school show choir is about competition and more or less staying with the same thing and then not changing it throughout the year. “Glee” has a new song every week and so it, kind of like Eric said, skews the idea.
KG: Tell me little bit about your upcoming show.
DP: Basically all of second semester we are traveling. We don’t really do a show in Madison; we do some kind of close, but this is the one chance people have to really see what Singers is all about on the campus area.
NH: Something else that’s super cool about it is that we have the whole week before hand to prepare the Union Theater for the show, and a lot of the times we have a day. That way we can set our lights to be exactly where we want them to be, we can test out the sound all week and also rehearse there before we get to actually perform, so I feel like that sets us up to be more successful.
ER: Our theme to our show this year is “I’ll take you there” – it is kind of a journey across America. We do music from different areas from California and the west coast to New York and everywhere in between. The music we are doing includes Motown, rock, classics, jazz from the Beach Boys to Elvis and stuff you hear on the radio.
KG: Do you have a favorite part of the show?
NH: My favorite piece is probably the very beginning. We do “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka, so it’s like the creepy music, and we have the guy who is Willy Wonka. We get to pretend we are dolls on a shelf staring at you, and you don’t even know it and it’s just exciting.
ER: We do two band features, one is New Orleans style and one is Woodstock, and Woodstock has to be my favorite part of the show. I think everyone just really enjoys playing it.
DP: I think the whole Motown section of our show is my favorite just because it is such a good era of music. So many amazing talented artists came out of there and to be able to recreate what they did is really cool.
Wisconsin Singers will be performing at the Union Theater on Nov. 12 and 13 at 7:30 p.m. Student tickets are $10-$12 at the door. All proceeds go to the Wisconsin Singers.
