On the PAC stage, Kalia Wang ’26 performs a verse from her duet with Ryan Gu ’26. The duo performed ‘Both Sides Now’ by Joni Mitchell, and the Playlist performance marked their third year in a row performing duets at end-of-year concerts.
Avery Parks and her fellow seniors hold hands in joy as the show closes. Shortly after the seniors were joined by the rest of choir to perform a couple more songs.
Performing their duet, Anna Bruce and Kate Hammonds ’27 sing ‘What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger’. The duo filled the crowd with energy.
Dancing along with fellow Choir members, Avery Parks ’24 energetically performs. The members energetically danced and sang to the song ‘Innova’, a mashup of Adele’s songs.
Energetically singing, Stella Marquardt ’25 performs ‘Get This Party Started’. Marquardt practiced her solo for months to prepare for Playlist.
Seniors Kayla Contello, Elise Trenk, and Anika Iyer sing ‘Cowboy Take Me Away’. Contello, Trenk, and Iyer are all co-presidents of choir.
All Westwood Choirs took to the Raymond E. Hartfield Performing Arts Center (PAC) on Saturday, April 21 to perform their end-of-year pop showcase Playlist. Each individual class choir, in addition to the show choir club Audacity and solo performers, performed a selection of songs, all written by female songwriters and singers.
“Originally, [the theme] was supposed to be Elton John, [but] one of our current presidents proposed Girl Talk, which was music written and sung by women,” Playlist officer Anika Salsberry ‘25 said. “I was able to pick out a bunch of songs, along with my two other playlist officers. We were able to represent a variety of different artists, from a variety of different generations and different genres.”
Many songs featured choreography, created by dance teacher and choreographer Ms. Katie Gunderson and Playlist officer Avery Parks ‘24. In addition to creating dances, Parks was also responsible for teaching and cleaning the choreography for all the choirs.
“I started with making my own choreography, which took a lot of time and a lot of notes,” Parks said. “And then I started teaching it in class, but when we started having after-school rehearsals was when it started coming together. And then I started meeting with our professional choreographer in the mornings, and she would teach me opener and closer which I would then teach to the class.”
During the first act of the performance, Choir Presidents and seniors Kayla Contello, Elise Trenk, and Annika Iyer performed Cowboy Take Me Away by the Chicks. The performance served to celebrate the work all three had done together as presidents throughout the year.
We turned this program into something we all wanted to experience and had others enjoy that as well. — Iyer
Before the performance, solo singers as well as small groups had the chance to audition for individual numbers in the show. A total of twelve individual songs were included in the program, spanning the gamut of female-written songs – from Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For? to Kelly Clarkson’s What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger. One of these performances was a duet to Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell, performed by sophomores Ryan Gu and Kalia Wang.
“We’ve been doing duets for spring shows for a couple of years,” Gu said. “I think this is our third year doing a duet, so it wasn’t really a question. My favorite part was the performance itself. We worked so hard, and it was about having fun and feeling good about the work we did.”
Through all of the work involved, singers agreed that the end-of-year concert was a fulfilling way to bring closure to their season and unite all the choir members in one high-energy performance.
“It was exciting to interact and dance with people from all of the choirs,” Iyer said. “To be together is something we usually don’t get to experience.”
